Semantic Screen-Space Occlusion for Multiscale Molecular Visualization

Information

• Publication Type: Journal Paper with Conference Talk
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • Visualization Group
• Date: September 2018
• Journal: Eurographics Workshop on Visual Computing for Biology and Medicine
• Call for Papers: Call for Paper
• Conference date: September 2018

Abstract

Visual clutter is a major problem in large biological data visualization. It is often addressed through the means of level of detail schemes coupled with an appropriate coloring of the visualized structures. Ambient occlusion and shadows are often used to improve the depth perception. However, when used excessively, these techniques are sources of visual clutter themselves. In this paper we present a new approach to screen-space illumination algorithms suitable for use in illustrative visualization. The illumination effect can be controlled so that desired levels of semantic scene organization cast shadows while other remain flat. This way the illumination design can be parameterized to keep visual clutter, originating from illumination, to a minimum, while also guiding the user in a multiscale model exploration. We achieve this by selectively applying occlusion shading based on the inherent semantics of the visualized hierarchically-organized data. The technique is in principle generally applicable to any hierarchically organized 3D scene and has been demonstrated on an exemplary scene from integrative structural biology.

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BibTeX

@article{koch_bernhard_2018-1,
  title =      "Semantic Screen-Space Occlusion for Multiscale Molecular
               Visualization",
  author =     "Thomas Bernhard Koch and David Kou\v{r}il and Tobias Klein
               and Peter Mindek and Ivan Viola",
  year =       "2018",
  abstract =   "Visual clutter is a major problem in large biological data
               visualization. It is often addressed through the means of
               level of detail schemes coupled with an appropriate coloring
               of the visualized structures. Ambient occlusion and shadows
               are often used to improve the depth perception. However,
               when used excessively, these techniques are sources of
               visual clutter themselves. In this paper we present a new
               approach to screen-space illumination algorithms suitable
               for use in illustrative visualization. The illumination
               effect can be controlled so that desired levels of semantic
               scene organization cast shadows while other remain flat.
               This way the illumination design can be parameterized to
               keep visual clutter, originating from illumination, to a
               minimum, while also guiding the user in a multiscale model
               exploration. We achieve this by selectively applying
               occlusion shading based on the inherent semantics of the
               visualized hierarchically-organized data. The technique is
               in principle generally applicable to any hierarchically
               organized 3D scene and has been demonstrated on an exemplary
               scene from integrative structural biology. ",
  month =      sep,
  journal =    "Eurographics Workshop on Visual Computing for Biology and
               Medicine",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2018/koch_bernhard_2018-1/",
}