Convert non-convex meshes to convex meshes for depth sorting in volume rendering

Abstract

Irregular mesh depth sorting plays an important role for volume rendering in scientific visualization. In recent years, some algorithms have been proposed for the depth sorting of irregular convex meshes, but less attention has been devoted to the depth sorting of non-convex meshes. In this paper, two different approaches for converting non-convex meshes into convex meshes are proposed. The first one is to fill original meshes with a set of tetrahedra on the exterior boundaries of meshes. The second one is to take the plane of exterior faces of meshes to divide the space until each subspace includes only one acyclic convex submesh. The subdivision process is represented by a binary tree, Binary Mesh Partitioning tree (BMP tree). Theoretical analysis and experimental results are shown.KeywordsFilling ProcessOriginal MeshExterior BoundaryScientific VisualizationIrregular MeshThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.