Abstract

Flow volumes are the volumetric equivalent of stream lines. They provide more information about the vector field being visualized than do stream lines or ribbons. Presented is an efficient method for producing flow volumes, composed of transparently rendered tetrahedra, for use in an interactive system. The problems of rendering, subdivision, sorting,compositing artifacts, and user interaction are dealt with. Efficiency comes from rendering only the volume of the smoke, using hardware texturing and compositing.