Volume Rendering of Curvilinear-Grid Data Using Low-Dimensional Deformation Textures

Abstract

In this paper, we present a high quality and interactive method for volume rendering curvilinear-grid data sets. This method is based on a two-stage parallel transformation of the sample position into intermediate computational space then into texture space through the use of multiple 1 and 2D deformation textures using hardware acceleration. In this manner, it is possible to render many curvilinear-grid volume data sets at high quality and with a low memory footprint, while taking advantage of modern graphic hardware's tri-linear filtering for the data itself. We also extend our method to handle volume shading. Additionally, we present a comprehensive study and comparisons with previous works, we show improvements both in quality and performance using our technique on multiple curvilinear data sets.