W. von Funck, T. Weinkauf, H. Theisel and H.-P. Seidel

Smoke rendering is a standard technique for flow visualization. Most approaches are based on a volumetric, pARTICLE based, or image based representation of the smoke. This paper introduces an alternative representation of smoke structures: as semi-transparent streak surfaces. In order to make streak surface integration fast enough for interactive applications, we avoid expensive adaptive retriangulations by coupling the opacity of the triangles to their shapes. This way, the surface shows a smoke-like look even in rather turbulent areas. Furthermore, we show modifications of the approach to mimic smoke nozzles, wool tufts, and time surfaces. The technique is applied to a number of test data sets.

@ARTICLE{Funck:2008:IEEE,
author = {W. von Funck and T. Weinkauf and H. Theisel and H.-P. Seidel},
title = {Smoke Surfaces: An Interactive Flow Visualization Technique Inspired
by Real-World Flow Experiments},
journal = {IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proceedings
IEEE Visualization)},
year = {2008},
volume = {14},
pages = {1396--1403},
number = {6},
month = {November - December},
abstract = {Smoke rendering is a standard technique for flow visualization. Most
approaches are based on a volumetric, pARTICLE based, or image based
representation of the smoke. This paper introduces an alternative
representation of smoke structures: as semi-transparent streak surfaces.
In order to make streak surface integration fast enough for interactive
applications, we avoid expensive adaptive retriangulations by coupling
the opacity of the triangles to their shapes. This way, the surface
shows a smoke-like look even in rather turbulent areas. Furthermore,
we show modifications of the approach to mimic smoke nozzles, wool
tufts, and time surfaces. The technique is applied to a number of
test data sets.},
comment = {2008.0001.00},
keywords = {Unsteady flow visualization, streak surfaces, smoke visualization}
}