Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!ginosko!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!well!nagle From: nagle@well.UUCP (John Nagle) Newsgroups: comp.graphics Subject: Re: iso-surfaces in SciVi Message-ID: <13893@well.UUCP> Date: 2 Oct 89 00:19:29 GMT References: <19889@mimsy.UUCP> <5430@portia.Stanford.EDU> <16722@brunix.UUCP> Reply-To: nagle@well.UUCP (John Nagle) Lines: 16 I've been trying out isosurfaces of vector, rather than scalar, fields, in hopes that this might be useful in modelling skin on a skeleton. The idea is that with vector fields, you have more information, and by the use of suitable combining functions, behaviors other than merging of surfaces ("waterlike" behavior) can be obtained. The obvious combining function is just vector addition, but if you just add vectors, the results are disappointing. Think about what the sum of two vector fields radiating from two points looks like. Yes, there's a zero at the midpoint between the two sources, but off the centerline, you have nonzero values. The resulting isosurface still looks like the one generated from a scalar field, but there's a hole inside it around the midpoint. Anyone else tried this approach? John Nagle