Line Integral Convolution for Real-Time Illustration of Molecular Surface Shape and Salient Regions

Abstract

We present a novel line drawing algorithm that illustrates surfaces in real-time to convey their shape. We use line integral convolution (LIC) and employ ambient occlusion for illustrative surface rendering. Furthermore, our method depicts salient regions based on the illumination gradient. Our method works on animated surfaces in a frame-coherent manner. Therefore, it yields an illustrative representation of time-dependent surfaces as no preprocessing step is needed. In this paper, the method is used to highlight the structure of molecular surfaces and to illustrate important surface features like cavities, channels, and pockets. The benefit of our method was evaluated with domain experts. We also demonstrate the applicability of our method to medical visualization.