Raycasting

Raycasting is a technique used in computer graphics and scientific visualization to compute the interaction of rays with a 3D scene or volume. It is commonly applied in fields such as medical imaging, engineering, and gaming to render volumetric data and simulate realistic lighting effects. By tracing rays from the viewpoint through the dataset, raycasting determines how light interacts with the medium, enabling high-quality visualizations of complex structures.

Opening the Raycasting Workspace in Voreen

To access the rendering-raycasting.vws workspace in Voreen, follow these steps:

1. Go to File → Open Workspaces
2. Navigate to Workspaces
3. Select rendering-raycasting.vws
4. Click Open and switch to Application Mode

Operations in the Properties Space

• Data Input:
  Use Clear Volume to remove the current input file and Load Volume to load new data.
• Color Mapping (Transfer Function):
  Adjust the transfer function for the visualization.
• Camera:
  Configure the camera setting and various further options.
• Axis-Aligned Clipping:
  After enabling, a cube around the object is created. For this cube clipping in x,y and z component is possible.
• Ray-Casting Options:
  Configure the ray casting calculation. For example, choosing different shading styles or rendering qualities is possible.
• Background:
  Adjust the background of the visualization.
• Save Image:
  Save the visualization as a .png file.

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Advanced Raycasting

In Getting started the raycasting pipeline was already mentioned. There, it was shown how to adjust the workspace such that a mask can be visualized in the view.