Interactive Exploded Views for Molecular Structures

Maximillian Sbardellati, Haichao Miao, Hsiang-Yun Wu, Meister Eduard Gröller, Ivan Barisic, Ivan Viola
Interactive Exploded Views for Molecular Structures
In Proceedings of the 9th Eurographics Workshop on Visual Computing for Biology and Medicine. September 2019.
[paper]

Information

Abstract

We propose an approach to interactively create exploded views of molecular structures with the goal to help domain experts in their design process and provide them with a meaningful visual representation of component relationships. Exploded views are excellently suited to manage visual occlusion of structure components, which is one of the main challenges when visualizing complex 3D data. In this paper, we discuss four key parameters of an exploded view: explosion distance, direction, order, and the selection of explosion components. We propose two strategies, namely the structure-derived exploded view and the interactive free-form exploded view, for computing these four parameters systematically. The first strategy allows scientists to automatically create exploded views by computing the parameters from the given object structures. The second strategy further supports them to design and customize detailed explosion paths through user interaction. Our approach features the possibility to animate exploded views, to incorporate ease functions into these animations and to display the explosion path of components via arrows. Finally, we demonstrate three use cases with various challenges that we investigated in collaboration with a domain scientist. Our approach, therefore, provides interesting new ways of investigating and presenting the design layout and composition of complex molecular structures.

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BibTeX

@inproceedings{Sbardellati-2019-vcbm,
  title =      "Interactive Exploded Views for Molecular Structures",
  author =     "Maximillian Sbardellati and Haichao Miao and Hsiang-Yun Wu
               and Meister Eduard Gr\"{o}ller and Ivan Barisic and Ivan
               Viola",
  year =       "2019",
  abstract =   "We propose an approach to interactively create exploded
               views of molecular structures with the goal to help domain
               experts in their design process and provide them with a
               meaningful visual representation of component relationships.
               Exploded views are excellently suited to manage visual
               occlusion of structure components, which is one of the main
               challenges when visualizing complex 3D data. In this paper,
               we discuss four key parameters of an exploded view:
               explosion distance, direction, order, and the selection of
               explosion components. We propose two strategies, namely the
               structure-derived exploded view and the interactive
               free-form exploded view, for computing these four parameters
               systematically. The first strategy allows scientists to
               automatically create exploded views by computing the
               parameters from the given object structures. The second
               strategy further supports them to design and customize
               detailed explosion paths through user interaction. Our
               approach features the possibility to animate exploded views,
               to incorporate ease functions into these animations and to
               display the explosion path of components via arrows.
               Finally, we demonstrate three use cases with various
               challenges that we investigated in collaboration with a
               domain scientist. Our approach, therefore, provides
               interesting new ways of investigating and presenting the
               design layout and composition of complex molecular
               structures.",
  month =      sep,
  booktitle =  "Proceedings of the 9th Eurographics Workshop on Visual
               Computing for Biology and Medicine",
  event =      "VCBM 2019",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2019/Sbardellati-2019-vcbm/",
}