Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum
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ZIB PaperWeb
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| SC 94-37 | Detlev Stalling, Hans-Christian Hege
Fast and Resolution Independent Line Integral Convolution A shorter version appeared in: Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 95, Los Angeles, CA, August 6-11, 1995. ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, Annual Conference Series (1995) pp. 249-256 |  |
Abstract: Line Integral Convolution (LIC) is a powerful technique
for generating
striking images and animations from vector data.
Introduced in 1993, the method has rapidly found many application areas,
ranging from computer arts to scientific visualization. Based upon locally
filtering an input texture along a curved stream line segment in a vector
field, it is able to depict directional information at high spatial
resolutions.
We present a new method for computing LIC images, which minimizes the total
number of stream lines to be computed and thereby reduces computational
costs by an order of magnitude compared to the original algorithm. Our
methods utilizes fast, error-controlled numerical integrators. Decoupling
the characteristic lengths in vector field grid, input texture and output
image, it allows to compute filtered images at arbitrary
resolution. This feature is of great significance in computer animation
as well as in scientific visualization, where it can be used to explore
vector data by smoothly enlarging structure of details.
We also present methods for improved texture animation, employing constant
filter kernels only. To obtain an optimal motion effect, spatial decay of
correlation between intensities of distant pixels in the output image has
to be controlled. This is achieved by blending different phase shifted box
filter animations and by adaptively rescaling the contrast of the output
frames.