Author :
Kaufman, Arie ; Cohen, Daniel ; Yagel, Roni
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci., State Univ. of New York, Stony Brook, NY, USA
Abstract :
Volume graphics, which employs a volume buffer of voxels for 3D scene representation, is discussed. Volume graphics offers advantages over surface graphics: it is viewpoint independent, insensitive to scene and object complexity, and suitable for the representation of sampled and simulated data sets. Moreover, geometric objects can be mixed with these data sets. Volume graphics supports the visualization of internal structures and lends itself to the realization of block operations, constructive solid geometry modeling, irregular voxel sizes, and hierarchical representation. The problems associated with the volume buffer representation (such as discreteness, memory size, processing time, and loss of geometric representation) are discussed.<>
Keywords :
computational geometry; data visualisation; solid modelling; 3D scene representation; block operations; constructive solid geometry modeling; discreteness; geometric objects; hierarchical representation; internal structures; irregular voxel sizes; memory size; processing time; sampled data sets; simulated data sets; viewpoint independence; volume buffer; volume graphics; volume visualization; Computational geometry; Geometric modeling; Visualization;
