Real-time isosurface rendering of smooth fields

Abstract  

This paper presents a new technique for real-time isosurface visualization of three-dimensional smooth fields. This technique enables direct isosurface rendering of smoothly defined fields without generating intermediate polygon models as used in the marching-cube algorithm, a standard technique for isosurface extraction. We developed a parallel algorithm that is suitable for effective computation on graphics hardware by converting any field to a set of polynomials, enabling the detection of intersections between rays and isosurfaces at arbitrary isovalue with small computational cost. In addition, the isovalue to be rendered can be changed in real time, because the algorithm is not restricted to a specific isovalue. The technique can also be applied to the problem of the direct rendering of implicit surfaces that are defined as isosurfaces of smoothly defined fields.