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 scientifie visualization applications. We present an architecture that ean possibly bring this goal within reach. In this architecture we combine the recently identified method of using texture mapping for volume rendering[5, 2] 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 RealityEngine as an example. The ar­ ehitecture 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.