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Interactive Rendering of Materials and Biological Structures on Atomic and Nanoscopic Scale
Author(s) -
Lindow N.,
Baum D.,
Hege H.C.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
computer graphics forum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.578
H-Index - 120
eISSN - 1467-8659
pISSN - 0167-7055
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8659.2012.03128.x
Subject(s) - mesoscopic physics , exploit , rendering (computer graphics) , nanoscopic scale , computer science , atomic units , bridging (networking) , visualization , computational science , nanotechnology , materials science , computer graphics (images) , physics , artificial intelligence , quantum mechanics , computer network , computer security
The properties of both inorganic and organic materials and the function of biological structures can often only be understood by analyzing them simultaneously on atomic and nanoscopic, if not mesoscopic, scale. Here, the problem arises to render millions to billions of atoms. We propose a method by which it is possible to interactively visualize atomic data, bridging five orders of magnitude in length scale. For this, we propose a simple yet efficient GPU rendering method that enables interactive visualization of biological structures consisting of up to several billions of atoms. To be able to load all atomic data onto the GPU, we exploit the fact that biological structures often consist of recurring molecular substructures. We also exploit that these objects typically are rendered opaquely, so that only a fraction of the atoms is visible. The method is demonstrated on both biological structures as well as atom probe tomography data of an inorganic specimen. We conclude with a discussion about when ‐during ascension from atomic to mesoscopic scale – level‐of‐detail representations become necessary.