Image-Space GPU Metaballs for Time-Dependent Particle Data Sets
Christoph Müller, Sebastian Grottel, Thomas Ertl · Vision Modeling and Visualization · 2007
Molecular dynamics simulations are today a widely used tool in many research fields. Such simulations produce large time-dependent data sets, which need to be interactively visualised allowing efficient exploration. On the other hand, commonly used point-based rendering of the individual particles usually fails to emphasise global contiguous structures like particle clusters. To solve this issue, we want to visualise these data sets using metaballs. Free particles form individual spheres while clustered particles result in larger closed shapes. Using image-space hardware-accelerated techniques provides interactive frame rates and high visual quality. We present two approaches evaluating the metaballs shapes on the graphics hardware. The first approach uses a vicinity data structure stored in graphics memory to evaluate the metaballs shape in a single rendering pass. The second approach uses multiple rendering passes to approximate the metaballs shape on a per pixel basis.