Volume rendering of 3D scalar and vector fields at LLNL

Simulation of complex 3D phenomena generate data sets which are hard to comprehend using conventional 2D oriented visualization tools. One way to overcome this limitation is to use various volume visualization techniques. While early volume visualization techniques worked well on simple scalar volumes they failed to exploit frame buffer hardware capabilities and handle higher order data such as vector fields. Work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has centered on developing new techniques and extending existing techniques. This paper describes the various algorithms developed for volume rendering, and presents new methods of examining vector fields in a volumetric fashion.