Practical Parallel Rendering of Detailed Neuron Simulations
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Date
2013
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Eurographics Association
Abstract
Parallel rendering of large polygonal models with transparency is challenging due to the need for alpha-correct blending and compositing, which is costly for very large models with high depth complexity and spatial overlap. In this paper we compare the performance of raster-based rendering methods on mesh models of neurons using two applications, one of which is specifically tailored to the neuroscience application domain, the other a general purpose visualization tool with domain specific additions. The first implements both sort-first and sort-last and uses a scene graph style traversal to cull objects, and dual depth peeling for order independent transparency, whilst the other uses a simpler brute force data-parallel approach with sort last composition. The advantages and trade offs of these approaches are discussed. We present the optimized algorithms needed to achieve interactive frame rates for a non-trivial, real-world parallel rendering scenario. We show that a generic data visualization application can provide competitive performance when optimizing its rendering pipeline, with some loss of capability over an optimized domain-specific application.
Description
@inproceedings{:10.2312/EGPGV/EGPGV13/049-056,
booktitle = {Eurographics Symposium on Parallel Graphics and Visualization},
editor = {Fabio Marton and Kenneth Moreland},
title = {{Practical Parallel Rendering of Detailed Neuron Simulations}},
author = {Hernando, Juan B. and Biddiscombe, John and Bohara, Bidur and Eilemann, Stefan and Schürmann, Felix},
year = {2013},
publisher = {The Eurographics Association},
ISSN = {1727-348X},
ISBN = {978-3-905674-45-3},
DOI = {/10.2312/EGPGV/EGPGV13/049-056}
}