Authors:
Bidur Bohara
and
Bijaya B. Karki
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University, United States
Keyword(s):
Trajectory Rendering, Clutter Reduction, Position Merging, Atomistic (Molecular) Visualization
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Animation and Simulation
;
Animation of Particle Systems
;
Computer Vision, Visualization and Computer Graphics
;
Point-Based Rendering
;
Rendering
;
Rendering Algorithms
Abstract:
Visualization of position-time series data from molecular dynamics simulations of a material has to render atomic trajectories, and relevant structural and dynamical information. Clutter/occlusion associated with overlapping trajectories becomes serious even for moderate data sizes. We present an adaptive hierarchical scheme for merging multiple positions along trajectories to significantly reduce the number of points/line segments used for rendering. Our approach finds positions lying within a space window (cut-off distance) from a reference position and merges them into a single position. The window is then moved in time order with merging performed at each successive location. All original positions are thus processed to a reduced number of new (merged) positions, which are further merged with the same or a different cut-off to obtain even fewer positions. This hierarchical merging may continue several levels deep. Moreover, merging can be performed subject to constraint of inform
ation, which is displayed (color-coded) along individual trajectories. Both the trajectory geometry and underlying atomic structure become increasingly visible after merging so the nature and extent of atomic arrangements and movements can be better assessed.
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