An Illustrative Visualization Framework for 3D Vector Fields

Figure 1: A) A direct streamline visualization of a 3D linear vector field exhibits severe visual clutter. B) A few intermediate representative streamlines generated by our approach capture the essential flow pattern. C) The final illustrative visualization using streamtapes enhances the depth cues for streamlines and succinctly conveys both directional and structural information. Most 3D vector field visualization techniques suffer from the problem of visual clutter, and it remains a challenging task to effectively convey both directional and structural information of 3D vector fields. In this paper, we present a novel visualization framework that combines the advantages of clustering methods and illustrative rendering techniques to generate a concise and informative depiction of complex flow structures. Given a 3D vector field, we first generate a number of streamlines covering the important regions based on an entropy measurement. Then we decompose the streamlines into different groups based on a categorization of vector information, wherein the streamline pattern in each group is ensured to be coherent or nearly coherent. For each group, we select a set of representative streamlines and render them in an illustrative fashion to enhance depth cues and succinctly show local flow characteristics. The results demonstrate that our approach can generate a visualization that is relatively free of visual clutter while facilitating perception of salient information of complex vector fields