Integrating Professional Design Software into a Science Visualization Workflow

摘要

Creating science visualizations that appeal to a general audience has recently become both easier and more challenging. The wide availability of Earth mapping software such as Google Map/Google Earth has increased familiarity with mapping and the appearance of Earth from space-on the other hand such professional products have increased people's expectations in terms of visualization quality and interactivity. The standard output of many scientific processing packages now appears crude and dated. NASA's Earth Science Outreach group at Goddard Space Flight Center has integrated professional graphics and animation software into our workflow to create visualizations for display on physical globes such as Digital Earth and Science on a Sphere, virtual globes such as Google Earth and regular flat display screens. Using such software allows the visualizer more interactive control over over the design aspects of a visualization such as color, line width and anti-aliasing and labeling.