A Hybrid Rendering Framework for the Real-time Manipulation of Volume and Surface Models

Stemmed from classical computer graphics research, volume visualization has been steadily growing into an important research field in the last 2 decades. This paper presents a hybrid rendering framework which integrates volume and surface models for real-time simulation. It focuses on improving the flexibility of the classic Scene Graph structure and the interactive rate of the Direct Volume Rendering (DVR)-based programming paradigm to enable the visualization of different type of models and their interactions. It is envisaged that this innovative functionality will open up a gate for the wider applications of volume rendering and visualization techniques on consumer-grade graphics platforms.