Browsing by Author "Becher, Michael"

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Open Access
Accelerated 2D visualization using adaptive resolution scaling and temporal reconstruction
(2023) Becher, Michael; Heinemann, Moritz; Marmann, Thomas; Reina, Guido; Weiskopf, Daniel; Ertl, Thomas
Data visualization relies on efficient rendering to allow users to interactively explore and understand their data. However, achieving interactive frame rates is often challenging, especially for high-resolution displays or large datasets. In computer graphics, several methods temporally reconstruct full-resolution images from multiple consecutive lower-resolution frames. Besides providing temporal image stability, they amortize the rendering costs over multiple frames and thus improve the minimum frame rate. We present a method that adopts this idea to accelerate 2D information visualization, without requiring any changes to the rendering itself. By exploiting properties of orthographic projection, our method significantly improves rendering performance while minimizing the loss of image quality during camera manipulation. For static scenes, it quickly converges to the full-resolution image. We discuss the characteristics and different modes of our method concerning rendering performance and image quality and the corresponding trade-offs. To improve ease of use, we provide automatic resolution scaling in our method to adapt to user-defined target frame rate. Finally, we present extensive rendering benchmarks to examine real-world performance for examples of parallel coordinates and scatterplot matrix visualizations, and discuss appropriate application scenarios and contraindications for usage.
Open Access
Feature based volumetric terrain generation
(2016) Becher, Michael
Two-dimensional heightfields are the most common data structure used for storing and rendering of terrain in offline rendering and especially real-time computer graphics. By its very nature, a 2D heightfield cannot store terrain structures with multiple vertical layers such as overhangs and caves. This restriction is lifted if a volumetric data structure is chosen in place of a 2D heightfield. However, the workflow of manual modelling and editing of volumetric terrain usually involves a large number of minor edits and adjustments and is very time consuming. Therefore, I propose to use three-dimensional curve-based primitives to efficiently model prominent, large scale terrain features and present techniques for volumetric generation of a complete terrain surface from the sparse input data by means of diffusion-based algorithms. By combining an efficient, feature-based toolset with a volumetric terrain representation, the modelling workflow is accelerated and simplified while offering the full artistic freedom of volumetric terrain.
Open Access
Interactive volume visualization with WebGl
(2012) Becher, Michael
Web-based applications have become increasingly popular in many areas and advances in web-based 3D graphics were made accordingly. In this context, we present a web based implementation of volume rendering using the relatively new WebGL API for interactive 3D graphics. An overview of the theoretical background of volume rendering as well as of the common approaches for a GPU implementation is given, followed by detailed description of our implementation with WebGL. Afterwards the implementation of advanced features is covered, before a short introduction to X3DOM, as a possible alternative for web based volume visualization, is given. It is the aim of this work to incorporate both basic and advanced methods of volume rendering and to achieve interactive framerates with WebGL, using the power of client-side graphics hardware. With regard to that, the result of our implementation is discussed by evaluating its performance and by comparing it to an alternative solution. Finally, we draw a conclusion of our work and point out possible future work and improvements.