Fast Line Integral Convolution for Arbitrary Surfaces in 3D

Summary We describe an extension of the line integral convolution method (LIC) for imaging of vector fields on arbitrary surfaces in 3D space. Previous approaches were limited to curvilinear surfaces, i.e. surfaces which can be parametrized globally using 2D-coordinates. By contrast our method also handles the case of general, possibly multiply connected surfaces. The method works by tesselating a given surface with triangles. For each triangle local euclidean coordinates are defined and a local LIC texture is computed. No scaling or distortion is involved when mapping the texture onto the surface. The characteristic length of the texture remains constant. In order to exploit the texture hardware of modern graphics computers we have developed a tiling strategy for arranging a large number of triangular texture pieces within a single rectangular texture image. In this way texture memory is utilized optimally and even large textured surfaces can be explored interactively.