sfg+@cs.cmu.edu (Sarah Gibson) (11/08/90)
I am looking for software packages that can be used for 3-D
volume visualization. I am interested in both voxel-based and
wireframe/solid-modeling representations but I need a package
that has a user friendly front end and that is flexible enough
so that we can add our own software. We are looking at
Vital Image's Voxelview now. Does anyone know of other
packages that are available? Please reply by Email.
Thanks.
--
Sarah Frisken Gibson, Engineering Design Research Center,
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213
Email: sfg@globe.edrc.cmu.edumccool@dgp.toronto.edu (Michael McCool) (11/08/90)
sfg+@cs.cmu.edu (Sarah Gibson) writes: >We are looking at vital Image's Voxelview now. Does anyone know of other >packages that are available? Please reply by Email. I know you wanted to have me reply by email, but there are some issues I wanted to raise here. I also would like to see a FAQ posting set up; see the end of this posting. First, with respect to Voxel View: MOUNT SOAPBOX Voxel-View's renderer is a forward-projection volume rendering algorithm which, as far as I can tell from the images, does not take resampling into account carefully enough; their images have stripes and moire' patterns very often. To their credit, the images are produced very rapidly, and can be very useful, but perhaps they should look into the algorithm proposed by Lee Westover (farthest elaboration in the proceedings of the 90 SIGGRAPH). The highest-quality images are still produced by a ray-casting algorithm, since resampling is so much more straightforward. A naive implementation of this tends to be slow, but Levoy has shown some acceleration techniques that are useful (and are not used enough). Mathematically, of course, they are (almost) theoretically equivalent, but nobody, including Westover, have been careful enough in maintaining equivalence. For example, Westover makes a linearity assumption for projecting his reconstruction filter which is not totally justified. DISMOUNT Anyways. On a different note, for sites wishing to add their own software or rendering techniques, something like apE from the Ohio Supercomputing Center or AVS from Stardent would be the way to go; everything is broken into modules in a network structure, so you don't even have to "recompile" to use one of your own modules. They also encourage a data standard which is always A Good Thing. Most of the original messages in this group seem to be "where can I get a package to do X". This could get tedious, so I suggest we set up a "Frequently Asked Questions" posting like that used in comp.graphics to handle queries of this nature. I would like to see more discussion of algorithms, with possible criticism of systems being produced, and this should free up bandwidth for that. As a start, I think the FAQ posting should include: email and addresses for venders of all major visualization packages (apE, AVS, Voxel View, ...) hardware venders that sell accelerators for volume visualization venders for specific markets (e.g. ISG Technologies for medical and life sciences visualization) Major references on Algorithms (Levoy's Paper in Trans on Graphics, Westover's Paper, etc.), and summaries of the pros and cons of these algorithms, along with a truncated description. I can start to collect this information if no-one else volunteers. If someone else wants to do this (or if I am stepping on a moderator's toes somewhere... I just got here) then let me know. Michael McCool@dgp.toronto.edu / Dynamic Graphics Project / U of Toronto
marcc@yoyodyne (Marc Cooper) (11/08/90)
In article <1990Nov7.150717.2240@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> mccool@dgp.toronto.edu (Michael McCool) writes: >sfg+@cs.cmu.edu (Sarah Gibson) writes: > >>We are looking at vital Image's Voxelview now. Does anyone know of other >Most of the original messages in this group seem to be "where can I get >a package to do X". This could get tedious, so I suggest we set up a >"Frequently Asked Questions" posting like that used in comp.graphics to >handle queries of this nature. I would like to see more discussion of >algorithms, with possible criticism of systems being produced, and this >should free up bandwidth for that. > agreed. >As a start, I think the FAQ posting should include: > email and addresses for venders of all major visualization packages > (apE, AVS, Voxel View, ...) > hardware venders that sell accelerators for volume visualization > venders for specific markets (e.g. ISG Technologies for > medical and life sciences visualization) > Major references on Algorithms (Levoy's Paper in Trans on Graphics, > Westover's Paper, etc.), and summaries of the pros and cons of these > algorithms, along with a truncated description. Also, ftp sights for various visualization packages. In particular, ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu comes to mind. (gee, I CAN'T imagine why!) The NCSA tool suite for the Macintosh, as well as XDataSlice, PolyView for the SGI's and a number of other good programs are available there. They are PD, free, with source if you want it.. my .sig might be here twice.. still getting the bugs out.. +-------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | "When the going gets weird, | Marc Cooper marcc@ncsa.uiuc.edu | | the weird turn pro." | | | | National Center for Supercomputing | | -Hunter S. Thompson | Applications | +-------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | The above opinoins are my own, and do not reflect those of NCSA. *Yawn* | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+