Time critical isosurface refinement and smoothing
V. Pascucci, C. L. Bajaj · 2000
Figure 1: (left) Smoothing and (right) refinement with smoothing computed from a coarse representation (center) using the same progressive algorithm. Multi-resolution data-structures and algorithms are key in Visualization to achieve real-time interaction with large data-sets. Research has been primarily focused on the off-line construction of such representations mostly using decimation schemes. Drawbacks of this class of approaches include: (i) the inability to maintain interactivity when the displayed surface changes frequently, (ii) inability to control the global geometry of the embedding (no selfintersections) of any approximated level of detail of the output surface. In this paper we introduce a technique for on-line construction and smoothing of progressive isosurfaces (see Figure 1). Our hybrid approach combines the flexibility of a progressive multiresolution representation with the advantages of a recursive subdivision scheme. Our main contributions are: (i) a progressive algorithm that builds a multi-resolution surface by successive refinements so that a coarse representation of the output is generated as soon as a coarse representation of the input is provided, (ii) application of the same scheme to smooth the surface by means of a 3D recursive subdivision rule, (iii) a multi-resolution representation where any adaptively selected level of detail surface is guaranteed to be free of self-intersections. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department