Hardware architecture for voxelization-based volume rendering of unstructured grids

Abstract

Interactive volume visualization of unstructured grid data is a much sought after, but as yet elusive, goal in many scientific visualization applications. We present an architecture that can possibly bring this goal within reach. In this architecture we combine the recently identified method of using texture mapping for volume rendering [R.A. Crawfis, N. Max, Texture Splats for 3D Scalar and Vector Field Visualization, Proceedings of Visualization '93, San Jose 1993, pp. 261–266; B. Cabral, N. Cam, J. Foran, Accelerated volume rendering and tomographic reconstruction using texture mapping hardware, Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Volume Visualization '94 1994, pp. 91–98.] with anti-aliased voxelization. We show how the proposed architecture can be implemented with simple extensions to existing high-end graphics systems, using the SGI Reality Engine (RE) as an example. The architecture has the advantage of providing both direct volume rendering and polygon based rendering at high performance levels on the same hardware platform. We present some simulation results that demonstrate the validity of our architecture.