Volume rendering is not what we want to do because we're not just trying to make pretty pictures. We need the polygons as input to computer simulations of biochemistry within the 3D space defined by the isosurface.
Thanks for the suggestion, though. :-) Tom On Mon, 17 Jan 2000, ballard andrews wrote: > Have you tried volume rendering? > Its not hard to write a DX module that uses > the SGI Volumizer API to render large data sets > (512^3) in real time on a single pipe. > > Tom Bartol wrote: > > > > On Mon, 17 Jan 2000, Chris Pelkie wrote: > > > > > >My colleagues and I are currently considering presenting our work with > > > >OpenDX at VDE2000. > > > > > > > >Thanks for your offer! > > > > > > > >Tom > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Good! Tom B. has some frighteningly large data sets (bits of brain and > > > stuff), as I remember. Plus, I assume you'd take your FreeBSD openDX, > > > right? > > > > > > Chris Pelkie > > > > You bet! Joel and I would come equipped with our Thinkpad 770's (mine > > with FreeBSD, Joel's with Win95) running OpenDX. Yes, our datasets are > > rather large 3D reconstructions of muscle and brain synapses. Our "small" > > datasets contain 10's of millions of triangles. The marching cubes > > isosurface extraction step takes a couple Gigs of RAM. We're not sure how > > we're going to do process our "large" datasets. We'll need algorithms > > that operate "out of core" (i.e. to and from disk cache). And you can just > > forget about rendering these in DX. RenderMan is very efficient and can > > render out of core (Level of Detail only gets you so far -- how do you > > think they rendered every leaf and blade of grass in "Bug's Life"?). > > Issues related to this would be an interesting topic for discussion at > > VDE2000. > > > > Tom > > -- > Dr. A. Ballard Andrews > Senior Research Scientist > Schlumberger Doll Research > Old Quarry Road Ridgefield, CT 06877 > tel: 203-431-5522 fax: 5521 >
