An effective illustrative visualization framework based on photic extremum lines (PELs)

Visualization and Extraction of Carvings for Heritage Conservation

We present novel techniques for visualizing, illustrating, analyzing, and generating carvings in surfaces. In particular, we consider the carvings in the plaster of the cloister of the Magdeburg cathedral, which dates to the 13th century. Due to aging and weathering, the carvings have flattened. Historians and restorers are highly interested in using digitalization techniques to analyze carvings in historic artifacts and monuments and to get impressions and illustrations of their original shape and appearance. Moreover, museums and churches are interested in such illustrations for presenting them to visitors. The techniques that we propose allow for detecting, selecting, and visualizing carving structures. In addition, we introduce an example-based method for generating carvings. The resulting tool, which integrates all techniques, was evaluated by three experienced restorers to assess the usefulness and applicability. Furthermore, we compared our approach with exaggerated shading and other state-of-the-art methods.

Real-Time Shape Illustration Using Laplacian Lines

This paper presents a novel object-space line drawing algorithm that can depict shapes with view-dependent feature lines in real time. Strongly inspired by the Laplacian-of-Gaussian (LoG) edge detector in image processing, we define Laplacian lines as the zero-crossing points of the Laplacian of the surface illumination. Compared to other view-dependent feature lines, Laplacian lines are computationally efficient because most expensive computations can be preprocessed. We further extend Laplacian lines to volumetric data and develop the algorithm to compute volumetric Laplacian lines without isosurface extraction. We apply the proposed Laplacian lines to a wide range of real-world models and demonstrate that Laplacian lines are more efficient than the existing computer generated feature lines, and can be used in interactive graphics applications.

Illustrative volume visualization using GPU-based particle systems

Illustrative techniques are generally applied to produce stylized renderings. Various illustrative styles have been applied to volumetric data sets, producing clearer images and effectively conveying visual information. We adopt particle systems to produce user-configurable stylized renderings from the volume data, imitating traditional pen-and-ink drawings. In the following, we present an interactive GPU-based illustrative volume rendering framework, called VolFliesGPU. In this framework, isosurfaces are sampled by evenly distributed particle sets, delineating surface shape by illustrative styles. The appearance of these styles is based on locally-measured surface properties. For instance, hatches convey surface shape by orientation and shape characteristics are enhanced by color, mapped using a curvature-based transfer function. Hidden-surfaces are generally removed to avoid visual clutter, after that a combination of styles is applied per isosurface. Multiple surfaces and styles can be explored interactively, exploiting parallelism in both graphics hardware and particle systems. We achieve real-time interaction and prompt parametrization of the illustrative styles, using an intuitive GPGPU paradigm that delivers the computational power to drive our particle system and visualization algorithms.