<title>Voxel volumes visualization system</title>

Abstract

Proposed visual system supports a number of advanced requirements, including very rapid and highly automated development of visual environment, real-world terrain decorated with high-resolution color-texture, 3D-texture for volumes, advanced atmospheric effects, shading and shadows, large numbers of moving objects, 3D-morphing, animation, deformations of surfaces and volumes. The system supports features such as area-of-interest and wide field-of-view. We present method for the generation of photo-realistic images of 3D-terrain datasets by mapping a digital aerial photographs on a perspective projection of a digital elevation map. In our method we depart from traditional techniques of defining and processing geometrical primitives, since there are problems which cannot be solved simply by brute-force approach. Another feature of the proposed method is the possibility to define dynamic objects like waves or surface movements by defining time dependent function which alters scalar field values. As a result, one can visualize propagating waves and surface deformations. The possibility to render both surfaces and volumetric data defined by 3D-grid with parameters like opacity, color, etc. in the grid points is a principle feature of the proposed approach.