Volume illustration: nonphotorealistic rendering of volume models

摘要

Accurately and automatically conveying the structure of a volumenmodel is a problem which has not been fully solved by existing volumenrendering approaches. Physics-based volume rendering approaches createnimages which may match the appearance of translucent materials in naturenbut may not embody important structural details. Transfer functionnapproaches allow flexible design of the volume appearance but generallynrequire substantial hand-tuning for each new data set in order to beneffective. We introduce the volume illustration approach, combining thenfamiliarity of a physics-based illumination model with the ability tonenhance important features using non-photorealistic renderingntechniques. Since the features to be enhanced are defined on the basisnof local volume characteristics rather than volume sample values, thenapplication of volume illustration techniques requires less manualntuning than the design of a good transfer function. Volume illustrationnprovides a flexible unified framework for enhancing the structuralnperception of volume models through the amplification of features andnthe addition of illumination effects