Nelson Max
Computer Science, UC Davis and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Thursday, February 2, 2006
1131 Kemper Hall
3 :10-4:00 p.m.
Hexahedron Projection for Curvilinear Grids
The polyhedron projection method for volume rendering sorts the grid cells from back to front, divides the projection of each cell into triangle strips or fans, and then uses the graphics hardware to render and composite the triangles. I will describe how to determine the triangles for the projection of distorted hexahedral cells that come from curvilinear grids, how to do the back to front visibility sort, and how to use floating point calculations in the GPU to do 32 bit floating point summation and compositing, which is otherwise not available in current hardware.
About the Speaker
Dr. Max received a PhD in Mathematics from Harvard University in 1967, and is now a 50% Professor at U C Davis and a 50% Computer Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He was director of the NSF supported Topology Films Project in the early 1970's, which produced computer animated educational films on mathematics. He has worked in Japan for 3 and a half years as co-director of two Omnimax (hemisphere screen) stereo films for international expositions, showing the molecular basis of life. His computer animation has won numerous awards. His research interests are in the areas of scientific visualization, volume and flow rendering, computer animation, molecular graphics, and realistic computer rendering, including shadow and radiosity effects.