Pre-computed illumination for isosurfaces
Kevin M. Beason, Josh Grant, David C. Banks, Brad Futch, M. Yousuff Hussaini · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2006
Commercial software systems are available for displaying isosurfaces (also known as level sets, implicit surfaces, varieties, membranes, or contours) of 3D scalar-valued data at interactive rates, allowing a user to browse the data by adjusting the isovalue. We present a technique for applying global illumination to the resulting scene by precomputing the illumination for level sets and storing it in a 3D illumination grid. The technique permits globally illuminated surfaces to be rendered at interactive rates on an ordinary desktop computer with a 3D graphics card. We demonstrate the technique on datasets from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the human brain, confocal laser microscopy of neural tissue in the mouse hippocampus, computer simulation of a Lennard-Jones fluid, and computer simulation of a neutron star.