79,197 research outputs found
Cosmic cookery : making a stereoscopic 3D animated movie.
This paper describes our experience making a short stereoscopic movie visualizing the development of structure in
the universe during the 13.7 billion years from the Big Bang to the present day. Aimed at a general audience for
the Royal Society's 2005 Summer Science Exhibition, the movie illustrates how the latest cosmological theories
based on dark matter and dark energy are capable of producing structures as complex as spiral galaxies and
allows the viewer to directly compare observations from the real universe with theoretical results. 3D is an
inherent feature of the cosmology data sets and stereoscopic visualization provides a natural way to present the
images to the viewer, in addition to allowing researchers to visualize these vast, complex data sets.
The presentation of the movie used passive, linearly polarized projection onto a 2m wide screen but it was
also required to playback on a Sharp RD3D display and in anaglyph projection at venues without dedicated
stereoscopic display equipment. Additionally lenticular prints were made from key images in the movie. We
discuss the following technical challenges during the stereoscopic production process; 1) Controlling the depth
presentation, 2) Editing the stereoscopic sequences, 3) Generating compressed movies in display speci¯c formats.
We conclude that the generation of high quality stereoscopic movie content using desktop tools and equipment
is feasible. This does require careful quality control and manual intervention but we believe these overheads
are worthwhile when presenting inherently 3D data as the result is signi¯cantly increased impact and better
understanding of complex 3D scenes
Shape: A 3D Modeling Tool for Astrophysics
We present a flexible interactive 3D morpho-kinematical modeling application
for astrophysics. Compared to other systems, our application reduces the
restrictions on the physical assumptions, data type and amount that is required
for a reconstruction of an object's morphology. It is one of the first publicly
available tools to apply interactive graphics to astrophysical modeling. The
tool allows astrophysicists to provide a-priori knowledge about the object by
interactively defining 3D structural elements. By direct comparison of model
prediction with observational data, model parameters can then be automatically
optimized to fit the observation. The tool has already been successfully used
in a number of astrophysical research projects.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in the "IEEE
Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
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