Fine-Scale Editing of Continuous Volumes using Adaptive Surfaces

Abstract

Many fields of science such as astronomy and astrophysics require the visualization and editing of smooth, continuous volume data. However, current high-level approaches to volume editing concentrate on segmentable volume data prevalent in medical or engineering contexts, and therefore rely on the presence of well-defined 3D surface layers. Editing arbitrary volumes, on the other hand, is currently only possible using low-level approaches based on the rather unintuitive direct manipulation of axis-aligned slices. In this paper, we present a technique to add or modify fine-scale structures within astronomical nebulae based on adaptive drawing surfaces that enable 2Dimage- like editing approaches. Our results look more natural and have been produced in a much shorter time than previously possible with axis-aligned slice editing.