A Fast High Accuracy Volume Renderer for Unstructured Data

Abstract

In this paper, we describe an unstructured mesh volume renderer. Our renderer is interactive and accurately integrates light intensity an order of magnitude faster than previous methods. We employ a projective technique that takes advantage of the expanded programmability of the latest 3D graphics hardware. We also analyze an optical model commonly used for scientific volume rendering and derive a new method to compute it that is very accurate but computationally feasible in real time. We demonstrate a system that can accurately produce a volume rendering of an unstructured mesh with a first-order approximation to any classification method. Furthermore, our system is capable of rendering over 300 thousand tetrahedra per second yet is independent of the classification scheme used.