Animation of Orthogonal Texture-Based Vector Field Visualization

Abstract

This paper introduces orthogonal vector field visualization on 2D manifolds: a representation by lines that are perpendicular to the input vector field. Line patterns are generated by line integral convolution (LIC). This visualization is combined with animation based on motion along the vector field. This decoupling of the line direction from the direction of animation allows us to choose the spatial frequencies along the direction of motion independently from the length scales along the LIC line patterns. Vision research indicates that local motion detectors are tuned to certain spatial frequencies of textures, and the above decoupling enables us to generate spatial frequencies optimized for motion perception. In addition, a filtering process is described to achieve a consistent and temporally coherent animation of the orthogonal vector field visualization. We present respective visualization algorithms for 2D planar vector fields and tangential vector fields on curved surfaces, and demonstrate that those algorithms lend themselves to efficient and interactive GPU implementations.