Volumetric Normal Mapping in Rendering of Multivariate Volume Data

Abstract

The work presented in this paper introduces volumetric normal maps for producing visual structure in direct volume rendering (DVR) of 3D data for the purpose of visualizing multiple attributes in a 3D volume. We use volumetric normal maps to represent normal vector glyphs that are subsequently applied to warp the gradients in the primary volume data. This method is intended to visualize some secondary attribute in DVR. We demonstrate that our method can render visual structures in DVR without the need of explicit surface reconstruction and texturing.