Adding a scalar value to 2D vector field visualization: the BLIC (Bumped LIC)

Abstract

Visualization of vector data produced from application areas such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD), environmental sciences, and material engineering is a challenging task. Texture-based methods reveal to be effective, versatile, and suitable for a large spectrum of applications since they allow to obtain high resolution output textures where direction, orientation, and magnitude of the flow can be displayed. In this paper we present a new method called BLIC (Bumped LIC), which allows both to characterize and visualize interesting structures in the flow and to map an additional scalar value in the output texture by bumps and depressions, leaving colors for further information mapping. Some examples show how the proposed method can enhance the quality of output textures with respect to the classical texture-based approaches.