Teaching
In summer semesters, lectures about High-Performance Visualization are offered. The lectures address basic methods of feature extraction, data processing, and efficient 3D visualization. Examples are demonstrated with the open-source software ParaView. Exercises to be implemented into ParaView will be offered on voluntary basis.
The teaching courses are open for students in Mathematics, Computer Science, or relevant application domains (like Geo-Science or Aerodynamics).
The effort for the lecture is 2+0 semester periods per week. Thus, it is recommended to take the seminar in winter term as well.
Syllabus
- Introduction (Motivation / Applications)
- Computer Graphics and HPC (Computer Graphics Primer, High-Performance Computing, Complexity and Performance)
- The Visualization Pipeline (The Visualization Pipeline, Pipeline Distribution, Parallel Rendering)
- Data Representation (Data Representation, Reconstruction, Discrete Datasets, Data Analysis with ParaView)
- Scalar Visualization (Data Subsets, Color Mapping, Contouring)
- Scalar Topology (Morse Theory, Persistent Homology, Reeb Graphs, Contour Trees, Extremum Graphs, Discrete Morse Theory)
- Vector Field Visualization (Glyphs, Derivatives, Point Location, Particle Tracing)
- Vector Field Topology (Particle Tracing: Over Tetrahedral Domains, Texture-based Vector Visualization, Topology Extraction)
- Volume Rendering (Tensor Field Visualization, Direct Volume Rendering)
- Interactive Post-Processing (Interactive Post-Processing, Parallel Post-Processing, Streaming and Multiresolution, In-Situ Data Processing)
- Terrain Rendering (Terrain Data Representation, Interactive Terrain Data Visualization, Precision Issues, Shadows)
- Flow Visualization (Fluid Dynamics, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Vortex Extraction)
- Multivariate Data Queries (Multivariate Data Queries, Statistical Analysis)
In winter semesters, a seminar aiming at the same topics is carried out. The seminar focuses on current trends in the domain of scientific visualization. A selection of top publications of leading researchers in this community are presented as basis for own state-of-the-art investigations. The topics covers aspects from multi-resolution extraction of topological features to parallel acceleration approaches for volume rendering in virtual environments. The participation at the summer lecture High-Performance Visualization could be a good preparation for the seminar. However, this is not a prerequisite. Additionally, knowledge in computer graphics or high-performance computing (HPC) may be an asset.
Books
- A. C. Telea, "Data Visualization – Principles and Practice", 2nd Edition, CRC Press, 2015
- E. W. Bethel, H. Childs, C. Hansen, "High Performance Visualization", CRC Press, 2013
- W. Schroeder, K. Martin, B. Lorensen, "The Visualization Toolkit", 4th Edition, Kitware, 2006
- C. Hansen, C. Johnson, "The Visualization Handbook", Elsevier Academic Press, 2005