Interactive Visualization of Large Finite Element Models
Dirc Rose, Thomas Ertl · Vision Modeling and Visualization · 2003
Triangles Std. Wire Frame 2 Triangles 32 32 Texture Finite element models used in crash worthiness sim- ulations now contain more than one million mostly quadrilateral elements. Interactive visualization of those models for pre- and postprocessing applica- tions cannot be achieved by brute force rendering of all triangles on even advanced graphics hard- ware. Well-known mesh simplification algorithms are rarely applied, since the finite element struc- ture needs to be retained, which is usually accom- plished by drawing an additional wire frame around each single element. We propose a new visualiza- tion technique which combines the advantages of a specifically adapted mesh reduction algorithm with a texture based rendering of surface details. We start out with a two-stage segmentation based on continuity features of the FE model. The result- ing patches form a parameterization domain where lost surface details and element boundaries can be stored in a normal map and in a densely encoded wire frame texture. The triangulated patches are rendered with a fragment shader performing per- pixel lighting and high quality outline generation for each finite element in a single pass. We achieve a significant speedup in the visualization while re- taining the visual details of the FE model and we expect our method to be applicable to all areas of Computer-Aided Engineering.