Rendering surface-particles

Surface-particles are very small facets, modeled as points with a normal. They can be used to visualize flow in several ways by variation of the properties of the particle sources. Here a new method is presented for the rendering of surface-particles. This method includes an improved shading model, the use of Gaussian filters for the prevention of spatial and temporal artifacts, an efficient scan-conversion algorithm, the handling of occlusion and the simultaneous rendering of geometric objects and surface-particles. The synthesis of images with limited depth of field is described, which literally allows the scientist to focus on areas of interest.