Surface-fitting Fundamentals

• Contouring (object order)

• Assumes Volume Contains Thin Boundary Surfaces
• Classify All Cells as Inside, Outside, or "On" The Surface
• Fit Constant-value Surfaces to All "On" Cells
• Render Surfaces

Surface-fitting Advantages

• Rendering Methods are Known: Shadows, Depth Cueing, Reflections, etc.
• Render in Hardware
• Display List in Memory
• Changing View/Light(s) Requires Only Rendering
• Compact Storage & Transmission
• Render in Object Order or Image Order
• Good Spacial Coherence for Efficient Rendering

Surface-fitting Disadvantages

• Requires Binary Classification
• Throws Away Data Between Surfaces
• False Positives and Negatives
• Handles Small Features Poorly
• Can't Handle Branching
• User Intervention Sometimes Required
• Amorphous Data Doesn't Have "Thin Surfaces"
• 30 Minutes to Extract 500,000 Triangles

Main Surface Fitting Algorithm Page
HyperVis Table of Contents