VisTrails
VisTrails is a new scientific workflow management system developed at the University of Utah that provides support for data exploration and visualization. Written in python, it has a visual programming interface for many libraries, including VTK.
HAVS
The Hardware Assisted Visibility Sorting (HAVS) algorithm is a GPU-based, direct volume renderer for unstructured grids. The algorithm operates in both object- and images-space and includes a sample-based, dynamic level-of-detail algorithm. Implementations have been included in the VTK library and ParaView.
K-Buffer
The K-Buffer is a data-structure for performing multi-fragment effects on the GPU in a single pass. Example effects include transparency, translucency, constructive solid geometry, depth-of-field, volume rendering, and isosurface rendering. A stencil-routing implementation has recently been included in NVIDIA’s Direct3D SDK 10 Samples.
Soft Shadows
We have developed a robust method for soft shadowing based on back projecting shadow maps. The algorithm reduces common artifacts such as light bleeding and surface acne while requiring virtually no parameter tuning.
Joint Bilateral Upsampling for Unstructured Volume Rendering
An image-space upsampling algorithm was developed to accelerate interactive direct volume rendering of unstructured grids. It works as a post-process and will result in substantial performance gains for any existing volume renderer that is sensitive to image size.
Ambient Occlusion in VTK
I needed some cheap and easy ambient occlusion in VTK so I wrote a small rendering pass class that implements Image Enhancement by Unsharp Masking the Depth Buffer, Luft et al., Siggraph 2006. Maybe someone else will find it useful.
