Illustrative Rendering of Particle Systems

Abstract

Sets of particles are a frequently used tool for the exploration of time-varying flow fields due to their ease of use and conceptual simplicity. Understanding temporal changes in such particle systems can be difficult with traditional visualization methods such as isosurface rendering and particle splatting. These types of methods only show the current shape of the point cloud and give no context about how the current time step relates to previous or future time steps. In this paper we present an illustrative rendering approach to visualizing particle systems. We use illustrative rendering techniques like silhouettes and trajectory arrows combined with volume raycasting to highlight important features in the particle system and show how these features change across time steps. Our method allows users to easily identify structures within the point cloud and understand how they evolve over time.