【Course Description】
If one asks a computer a question, it is happy to answer, with pages and pages of numbers. It is not easy for us to analyze such output, and yet our eyes are really good at seeing images and understanding the story they tell. Scientific Visualization is an art which converts data into meaningful images.
This course will introduce the students to visualization theory and practice. The students will work with several vital graphics tools, including OpenGL, VTK, Amira and VisIt. The students will learn how to present 2D and 3D data from scientific, engineering and medical applications. The students will use methods such as marching cubes, ray casting and stream lines to turn computational results into meaningful images. The students will see how the air flews around jet wings and how seismic data can be turned into an animation, so that an earthquake happens as you watch.
After completion of this course, the students should - be able to write computer codes for visualization using VTK or OpenGL; - be able to create effective visual representations of 2D and 3D scientific data sets; - determine the most applicable technique for a specific scientific visualization application; - be able to use existing visualization software packages; - be aware of the human visual perception and effectiveness of visualization.
【Reference Readings】
- The Visualization Handbook, by Charles Hansen and Christopher Johnson, Academic Press, 2005
- Information Visualization: An Introduction, Robert Spence
- The Visualization Toolkit: An Object-Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics, by William Schroeder, Ken Martin, 3rd Edition, 2006