Real-time Rendering of Electron Density Cloud Involving Interactive Manipulation : A Performance Test of Graphic Cards for Texture Quantity

Abstract

This paper presents electron cloud's metamorphosis in real-time, which can be controlled by direct manipulation of molecular bonds along a given path. The mixed state between a pair of volume data is approximately properly rendered in real-time. A set of discrete volume data is generated when a part of a molecular bond is moved along a certain path, beforehand. This generates an electron state in any position along the path and realizes seamless display. To realize manipulation more freely, large amounts of volume data have to be used. Volume data is drawn as a set of piled texture images for real-time processing in the rendering process. We have investigated the maximum amount of texture images that can be ran in real-time with typical graphic cards.