IRIS: Illustrative Rendering of Integral Surfaces

This week's visual is an award-winning visualization of vortex bubble breakdown.

Vortices can occur in any medium where fluid dynamics apply, such as air and water. When a vortex breaks down, these so-called bubbles form. Their shapes are actually very complex, which is where advanced visualization methods come into the picture.

This image is remarkable because it combines integral surfaces and illustrative rendering into a single technique, via IRIS,  which was developed by researchers at the Technische Universitat Kaiserslautern's Computer Graphics and HCI Group, and the University of California at Davis. According to the TU-Kaiserslautern's webpage:

"It is an example of a recently developed flow visualization technique, illustrative rendering of integral surfaces.

Illustrative rendering aims to improve shape perception by imitating hand-made illustrations.

Here, it is applied to integral surfaces, which are a commonly used tool for visualizing simulated flow fields. One of the Computer  Graphics and HCI Group’s core research subject is flow visualization."

This particular image won the Computer Graphics Forum's 2011 Cover Image Contest.

Visit the contest webpage for more information about the visualization techniques that were used to create the visualization. You can also access the paper, which was first presented at the IEEE Vis Conference 2010, in PDF format here.