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Item Comparative Visualization of Instabilities in Crash-Worthiness Simulations(The Eurographics Association, 2001) Sommer, Ove; Ertl, Thomas; David S. Ebert and Jean M. Favre and Ronald PeikertSince crash-worthiness simulations get more and more important as part of the car development process in order to reduce the cost of development, enhance the product quality, and minimize the time-to-market, the reliability of the simulation results plays a decisive role concerning their significance. Recently the simulation departments of several automotive companies started investigating the quantity and reason for deviations during a number of simulation runs on the same input model. In this case study we discuss different measurements for instability and present a texture-based visualization method which allows the engineers to efficiently explore the simulation results by interactively hiding finite element structures with nearly constant crash performance. Furthermore, we describe those parts of our prototype which use a CORBA layer for providing the same view on a set of simulation results and allowing the visual comparison by using the marker functionality.Item Interactive High-Quality Volume Rendering with Flexible Consumer Graphics Hardware(Eurographics Association, 2002) Engel, Klaus; Ertl, ThomasRecently, the classic rendering pipeline in 3D graphics hardware has become flexible by means of programmable geometry engines and rasterization units. This development is primarily driven by the mass market of computer games and entertainment software, whose demand for new special effects and more realistic 3D environments induced a reconsideration of the once static rendering pipeline. Besides the impact on visual scene complexity in computer games, these advances in flexibility provide an enormous potential for new volume rendering algorithms. Thereby, they make yet unseen quality as well as improved performance for scientific visualization possible and allow to visualize hidden features contained within volumetric data. The goal of this report is to deliver insight into the new possibilities that programmable state-of-the-art graphics hardware offers to the field of interactive, high-quality volume rendering. We cover different slicing approaches for texture-based volume rendering, non-polygonal iso-surfaces, dot-product shading, environment-map shading, shadows, pre- and post-classification, multi-dimensional classification, high-quality filtering, pre-integrated classification and pre-integrated volume rendering, large volume visualization and volumetric effects.Item A Multiscale Approach to Integrated Volume Segmentation and Rendering(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1997) Westermann, Rudiger; Ertl, ThomasA number of techniques have been proposed for rendering volumetric scalar data sets. Techniques have also been proposed for analyzing the three dimensional information contents of the underlying domain, but traditionally the data analysis part is left as a post-processing step which only involves the rendered two dimensional images. In this paper, we describe a visualization method for scalar volume data which integrates explicit knowledge of the underlying domain into the rendering process. The key of this approach lies in a hierarchical description of the discrete signal, which is decomposed into a sequence of multiscale representations. We describe a technique for the analysis of structures within the data. This allows for the segmentation and classification of the relevant features and can be used to improve their visual sensation. We also address the problem of accelerating the final rendering pass by integrating the extracted object space information into the ray traversal process.Item Interactive Visualization with Programmable Graphics Hardware(Eurographics Association, 2002) Ertl, ThomasOne of the main scientific goals of visualization is the development of algorithms and appropriate data models which facilitate interactive visual analysis and direct manipulation of the increasingly large data sets which result from simulations running on massive parallel computer systems, from measurements employing fast highresolution sensors, or from large databases and hierarchical information spaces. This task can only be achieved with the optimization of all stages of the visualization pipeline: filtering, compression, and feature extraction of the raw data sets, adaptive visualization mappings which allow the users to choose between speed and accuracy, and exploiting new graphics hardware features for fast and high-quality rendering. The recent introduction of advanced programmability in widely available graphics hardware has already led to impressive progress in the area of volume visualization. However, besides the acceleration of the final rendering, flexible graphics hardware is increasingly being used also for the mapping and filtering stages of the visualization pipeline, thus giving rise to new levels of interactivity in visualization applications. The talk will present recent results of applying programmable graphics hardware in various visualization algorithms covering volume data, flow data, terrains, NPR rendering, and distributed and remote applications.Item Hardware Accelerated Wavelet Transformations(The Eurographics Association, 2000) Hopf, Matthias; Ertl, Thomas; W. de Leeuw and R. van LiereWavelets and related multiscale representations are important means for edge detection and processing as well as for segmentation and registration. Due to the computational complexity of these approaches no interactive visualization of the extraction process is possible nowadays. By using the hardware of modern graphics workstations for accelerating wavelet decomposition and reconstruction we realize a first important step for removing lags in the visualization cycle.Item Particle Tracing on Sparse Grids(The Eurographics Association, 1998) Teitzel, Christian; Grosso, Roberto; Ertl, Thomas; Bartz, DirkThese days sparse grids are of increasing interest in numerical simulations. Based upon hierarchical tensor product bases, the sparse grid approach is a very e cient one improving the ratio of invested storage and computing time to the achieved accuracy for many problems in the area of numerical solution of di erential equations, for instance in numerical fluid mechanics. The particle tracing algorithms that are available so far cannot cope with sparse grids. Now we present an approach that directly works on sparse grids. As a second aspect in this paper, we suggest to use sparse grids as a data compression method in order to visualize huge data sets even on small workstations. Because the size of data sets used in numerical simulations is still growing, this feature makes it possible that workstations can continue to handle these data sets.Item Decoupling Polygon Rendering from Geometry using Rasterization Hardware(The Eurographics Association, 1999) Westermann, Rüdiger; Sommer, Ove; Ertl, Thomas; Dani Lischinski and Greg Ward LarsonThe dramatically increasing size of polygonal models resulting from 3D scanning devices and advanced modeling techniques requires new approaches to reduce the load of geometry transfer and processing. In order to supplement methods like polygon reduction or geometry compression we suggest to exploit the processing power and functionality of the rasterization and texture subsystem of advanced graphics hardware. We demonstrate that 3D-texture maps can be used to render voxelized polygon models of arbitrary complexity at interactive rates by extracting isosurfaces from distance volumes. Therefore, we propose two fundamental algorithms to limit the rasterization load: First, the model is partitioned into a hierarchy of axis-aligned bounding boxes that are voxelized in an error controlled multi-resolution representation. Second, rasterization is restricted to the thin boundary regions around the isosurface representing the voxelized geometry. Furthermore, we suggest and simulate an OpenGL extension enabling advanced per-pixel lighting and shading. Although the presented approach exhibits certain limitations we consider it as a starting point for hybrid solutions balancing load between the geometry and the rasterization stage and we expect some influence on future hardware design.Item Progressive Iso-Surface Extraction from Hierarchical 3D Meshes(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1998) Grosso, Roberto; Ertl, ThomasA multiresolution data decomposition offers a fundamental framework supporting compression, progressive transmission, and level-of-detail (LOD) control for large two or three dimensional data sets discretized on complex meshes. In this paper we extend a previously presented algorithm for 3D mesh reduction for volume data based on multilevel finite element approximations in two ways. First, we present efficient data structures which allow to incrementally construct approximations of the volume data at lower or higher resolutions at interactive rates. An abstract description of the mesh hierarchy in terms of a coarse base mesh and a set of integer records offers a high compression potential which is essential for an efficient storage and a progressive network transmission. Based on this mesh hierarchy we then develop a new progressive iso-surface extraction algorithm. For a given iso-value, the corresponding iso-surface can be computed at different levels of resolution. Changing to a higher or coarser resolution will update the surface only in those regions where the volume data is being refined or coarsened. Our approach allows to interactively visualize very large scalar fields like medical data sets, whereas the conventional algorithms would have required at least an order of magnitude more resources.Item Adaptive Texture Maps(The Eurographics Association, 2002) Kraus, Martin; Ertl, Thomas; Thomas Ertl and Wolfgang Heidrich and Michael DoggettWe introduce several new variants of hardware-based adaptive texture maps and present applications in two, three, and four dimensions. In particular, we discuss representations of images and volumes with locally adaptive resolution, lossless compression of light fields, and vector quantization of volume data. All corresponding texture decoders were successfully integrated into the programmable texturing pipeline of commercial off-the-shelf graphics hardware.Item High-Quality Unstructured Volume Rendering on the PC Platform(The Eurographics Association, 2002) Guthe, Stefan; Roettger, Stefan; Schieber, Andreas; Strasser, Wolfgang; Ertl, Thomas; Thomas Ertl and Wolfgang Heidrich and Michael DoggettFor the visualization of volume data the application of transfer functions is used widely. In this area the preintegration technique allows high quality visualizations and the application of arbitrary transfer functions. For regular grids, this approach leads to a two-dimensional pre-integration table which easily fits into texture memory. In contrast to this, unstructured meshes require a three-dimensional pre-integration table. As a consequence, the available texture memory limits the resolution of the pre-integration table and the maximum local derivative of the transfer function. Discontinuity artifacts arise if the resolution of the pre-integration table is too low. This paper presents a novel approach for accurate rendering of unstructured grids using the multi-texturing capabilities of commodity PC graphics hardware. Our approach achieves high quality by reconstructing the colors and opacities of the pre-integration table using the high internal precision of the pixel shader. Since we are using standard 2D multi-texturing we are not limited in the size of the pre-integration table. By combining this approach with a hardware-accelerated calculation of the pre-integration table, we achieve both high quality visualizations and interactive classification updates.