Illustrative Visualization and
Volume Rendering
Peter Sikachev
Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms
Vienna University of Technology
Outline
About TUVienna and vis-group
Rendering and visualization
Volume rendering
VolumeShop: an interactive system for direct
volume illustration
Recent group work overview
Peter Sikachev
1
Outline
About TUVienna and vis-group
Rendering and visualization
Volume rendering
VolumeShop: an interactive system for direct
volume illustration
Recent group work overview
Peter Sikachev
2
TUVienna
Urban campus
~17,600 students
~4,000 staff (1,800 –
academic)
19% foreign students
No tuition fees for
EU/EEA/Switzerland
students
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ICGA
Institute of computer
graphics and algorithms
Occupies a complete
floor + smth
3 groups
Algorithms and Data
Structures Group
Computer Graphics
Group
Pattern Recognition
and Image
Processing Group
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Computer Graphics Group
1 full professor
2 associate professors
25 scientific staff people (PhD students, postdocs,
exchange students etc)
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Visualization Sub-Group
Virtual Reality und
Visualisierung Forschungsgmbh
Österreichische
Akademie der
Wissenschaften
GWI Research
AKH Wien
University of Bergen
Norway
PHILIPS
Medical Systems
Peter Sikachev
Upper Austria University of
Applied Sciences
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Outline
About TUVienna and vis-group
Rendering and visualization
Volume rendering
VolumeShop: an interactive system for direct
volume illustration
Recent group work overview
Peter Sikachev
7
Computer Graphics
Computer
Graphics
Rendering
…
Peter Sikachev
Offline
Rendering
Visualization
Real-Time
Rendering
Volume
Visualization
8
Information
Visualization
…
Computer Graphics
Computer
Graphics
How?
What?
Rendering
…
Peter Sikachev
Offline
Rendering
Visualization
Real-Time
Rendering
Volume
Visualization
9
Information
Visualization
…
Computer Graphics
Computer
Graphics
Rendering
…
Peter Sikachev
Offline
Rendering
Visualization
Real-Time
Rendering
Volume
Visualization
10
Information
Visualization
…
Offline Rendering
Cinema
Advertisement
Peter Sikachev
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Computer Graphics
Computer
Graphics
Rendering
…
Peter Sikachev
Offline
Rendering
Visualization
Real-Time
Rendering
Volume
Visualization
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Information
Visualization
…
Real-Time Rendering
Games
3D interactive applications
Peter Sikachev
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[Zeller]
Computer Graphics
Computer
Graphics
Rendering
…
Peter Sikachev
Offline
Rendering
Visualization
Real-Time
Rendering
Volume
Visualization
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Information
Visualization
…
Volume Visualization
Healthcare
Industry
Geology
Forecast
Peter Sikachev
[Bruckner05]
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Computer Graphics
Computer
Graphics
Rendering
…
Peter Sikachev
Offline
Rendering
Visualization
Real-Time
Rendering
Volume
Visualization
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Information
Visualization
…
Information Visualization
Databases
Networks
Software engineering
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[Wonka]
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Outline
About TUVienna and vis-group
Rendering and visualization
Volume rendering
VolumeShop: an interactive system for direct
volume illustration
Recent group work overview
Peter Sikachev
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3D Texture
Example for a
histological
dataset
Convert a set of
2D scalar
functions to a
3D scalar
function
Consider as a
regular grid
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Volume Ray Casting
Ray Casting
Sampling
Shading
Compositing
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Volume Ray Casting
Ray Casting
Sampling
Shading
Compositing
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Shading
Needed for a
shape
perception
Does not
usually use a
correct physical
model
No shading
With shading
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Transfer Function
Direct
mapping
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Using
transfer
function
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3D function is
not equivalent
to the
importance
value
Mapping to
optical
properties is
needed
Transfer Function
transfer
function
{ f ( x, y, z ),...}{r , g , b,  }
where
f ( x, y, z )  3D function
r , g , b,   optical properties
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Transfer function
may depend on
different parameters:
function value
gradient
magnitude
segmentation
shape
size
Transfer Function
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Volume Ray Casting
Ray Casting
Sampling
Shading
Compositing
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Compositing
Several voxels
projects onto one
pixel – compositing is
needed
Different compositing
rules might be used:
Alpha-blending
(DVR)
Maximum intensity
projection (MIP)
Hybrid (MIDA)
…
[Bruckner09]
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Outline
About TUVienna and vis-group
Rendering and visualization
Volume rendering
VolumeShop: an interactive system for direct
volume illustration
Recent group work overview
Peter Sikachev
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What is VolumeShop?
VolumeShop is not …
… an extensive general-purpose visualization
class library
 try VTK, VisIt, ..
… a medical image processing and
visualization toolkit
 try MeVisLab, Amira, …
… a scene-graph API and rendering
framework
 try OpenInventor, Orge, …
Stefan Bruckner
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What is VolumeShop?
What does it do then?
VolumeShop is a prototyping platform for
visualization research
Goal is to provide maximum flexibility to the
developer
Provide easy-to-use facilities for common
cumbersome tasks
Give developers the freedom of choice not to
use them at all
Ease the transition from research prototypes
to actual applications
Stefan Bruckner
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Overview
graphical front-end,
project setup, property
management, …
VolumeShop application
base classes,
serialization, resource
management, plugin
mechanism, …
VolumeShop core
import, export,
compositing, interaction,
rendering, scripting, …
VolumeShop plugins
Stefan Bruckner
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Use Case
Peter Sikachev
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Outline
About TUVienna and vis-group
Rendering and visualization
Volume rendering
VolumeShop: an interactive system for direct
volume illustration
Recent group work overview
Peter Sikachev
33
Importance-Driven Visualization [Viola]
Motivation: show important features inside the
volume, preserving context
Cut-aways
Ghosted views
Level of sparseness
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Motivation
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Maximum Importance Projection
cylindrical
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conical
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Maximum Importance Projection
cylindrical
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conical
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Average Importance Compositing
image-space
Peter Sikachev
object space
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Visibility Preserving Compositing
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Levels of Sparseness
opacity
modulation &
color saturation
screen-door
transparency
volume thinning
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Exploded Views [Bruckner06]
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Exploded Views [Bruckner06]
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Context-Preserving Volume Rendering
[CVPR]
Motivation: large flat surface areas are
unimportant
These surfaces are highly lit
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Context-Preserving Volume Rendering
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Style Transfer Function [Bruckner07]
Motivation: integrate multiple NPR techniques
in one framework
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Style Transfer Function: Concept
regular transfer
function
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style transfer
function
Style Transfer Function: Results
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Style Transfer Function: Results
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[LiveSync]
A framework for combining 2D/3D views
Automatic viewpoint finding
Transfer function update
Region of interest growing
Importance-driven clipping
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[LiveSync]
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Announcement: 2 PhD Positions
ViMaL
visualization mapping
methods for incorporating
domain semantics
SCALE-VS
scalable algorithms
for visualization petascale
volume data
http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/jobs/
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References
[Fedkiw] Irving, G., Guendelman, E., Losasso, F. and Fedkiw, R., "Efficient Simulation of Large Bodies of
Water by Coupling Two and Three Dimensional Techniques", SIGGRAPH 2006, ACM TOG 25, 805-811
(2006).
[Zeller] Cyril Zeller, “Cloth Simulation“, White Paper for nVidia Direct3D SDK 10, 2007.
[Bruckner05] S. Bruckner, S. Grimm, A. Kanitsar, and E. Groeller. Illustrative context-preserving
volume rendering. In EuroVis, pages 69–76, 2005.
[Wonka] Pushpak Karnick, David Cline, Stefan Jeschke, Anshuman Razdan, Peter Wonka, "Route
Visualization Using Detail Lenses," IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 04 Jun. 2009.
[Bruckner09] Stefan Bruckner, Meister Eduard Gröller. Instant Volume Visualization using Maximum Intensity
Difference Accumulation. Computer Graphics Forum, 28(3):775-782, June 2009.
[Viola] Viola I., Kanitsar A., Groeller M. E.: Importance-driven feature enhancement in volume visualization.
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 11, 4 (2005), 408–418.
[Bruckner06] Stefan Bruckner, Meister Eduard Gröller. Exploded Views for Volume Data
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 12(5):1077-1084, September 2006.
[CVPR] Stefan Bruckner, Sören Grimm, Armin Kanitsar, Meister Eduard Gröller. Illustrative Context-Preserving
Volume Rendering. In Proceedings of EuroVis 2005, pages 69-76. May 2005.
[Bruckner07] Stefan Bruckner, Meister Eduard Gröller. Style Transfer Functions for Illustrative Volume
Rendering. Computer Graphics Forum, 26(3):715-724, September 2007.
[LiveSync] Peter Kohlmann, Stefan Bruckner, Armin Kanitsar, Meister Eduard Gröller. LiveSync++:
Enhancements of an Interaction Metaphor. In Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2008, pages 81-88. May
2008.
[RTVG] Christof Rezk-Salama, Daniel Weiskopf, Joe Kniss, Klaus Engel, Markus Hadwiger. Real-time Volume
Graphics. Published by A K Peters, 2006.
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