ICVG : Practical Constructive Volume Geometry for Indirect Visualization

The task of creating detailed three dimensional virtual worlds for interactive entertainment software can be simplified by using Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) techniques. CSG allows artists to combine primitive shapes, visualized through polygons, into complex and believable scenery. Constructive Volume Geometry (CVG) is a super-set of CSG that operates on volumetric data, which consists of values recorded at constant intervals in three dimensions of space. To allow volumetric data to be integrated into existing frameworks, indirect visualization is performed by constructing and visualizing polygon meshes corresponding to the implicit surfaces in the volumetric data. The Indirect CVG (ICVG) algebra, which provides constructive volume geometry operators appropriate to volumetric data that will be indirectly visualized is introduced. ICVG includes operations analogous to the union, difference, and intersection operators in the standard CVG algebra, as well as new operations. Additionally, a series of volumetric primitives well suited to indirect visualization is defined.