Interactive Isosurface Ray Tracing of Time-Varying Tetrahedral Volumes

Abstract-- We describe a system for interactively rendering isosurfaces of tetrahedral finite-element scalar fields using coherent ray tracing techniques on the CPU. By employing state-of-the art methods in polygonal ray tracing, namely aggressive packet/frustum traversal of a bounding volume hierarchy, we can accomodate large and time-varying unstructured data. In conjunction with this efficiency structure, we introduce a novel technique for intersecting ray packets with tetrahedral primitives. Ray tracing is flexible, allowing for dynamic changes in isovalue and time step, visualization of multiple isosurfaces, shadows, and depth-peeling transparency effects. The resulting system offers the intuitive simplicity of isosurfacing, guaranteed-correct visual results, and ultimately a scalable, dynamic and consistently interactive solution for visualizing unstructured volumes.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: VIS
• Authors: Ingo Wald, Heiko Friedrich, Aaron Knoll, Charles Hansen
• Keywords: IEEE Visualization, Ray Tracing, Ray Tracing Techniques, Tetrahedral Finite-element Scalar, VIS 2007, Visualization