Poisson-based tools for flow visualization

Abstract

This paper applies Poisson-based methods to assist in interactive exploration of steady flow fields. Using data-driven deformations we obtain flow-orthogonal and flow-tangential surfaces by a flux-based optimization. Surfaces are positioned interactively and deformed in real-time according to local flow. The deformed surfaces are particularly useful for defining seed structures. We show how the same gradient-based computational framework can be applied to obtain parametrizations of flow-aligned surfaces. This way it is easy to define nontrivial seed structures for integration-based flow visualization methods. Additionally, the flow-aligned parametrizations are employed for view-independent surface-based LIC visualizations. We apply our method to a number of data sets to show the effectiveness of our deformations and parametrization-based seed extraction methods for interactive flow exploration.