Marching Cubes in Cylindrical and Spherical Coordinates

Jeff Goldsmith
Jet Propulsion Laboratory 183-501

Allan S. (Bud) Jacobson
Jet Propulsion Laboratory

This paper appears in issue Volume 1, Number 1.
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Abstract

Isosurface extraction is a common analysis and visualization technique for three-dimensional scalar data. Marching Cubes is the most commonly-used algorithm for finding polygonal representations of isosurfaces in such data. We extend Marching Cubes to produce geometry for data sets that lie in spherical and cylindrical coordinate systems as well as show the steps for derivation of transformations for other coordinate systems. Such data sets are very common in the physical sciences, and display within their natural coordinate system aids visualization considerably.

Author Information

Jeff Goldsmith, Jet Propulsion Laboratory 183-501, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91106 jeff@tintin.jpl.nasa.gov

Allan S. (Bud) Jacobson, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91106 budj@apex.jpl.nasa.gov

Figures

These figures show isosurfaces of ozone concentration in the Earth's atmosphere. The figures were created using the LinkWinds data visualization system.

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Rectangular coordinates

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Cylindrical coordinates (South pole at the center)

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Spherical coordinates

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Isosurfaces at different contour levels, in spherical coordinates.

BibTeX Entry

@article{GoldsmithJacobson96,
  author = "Jeff Goldsmith and Allan S. (Bud) Jacobson",
  title = "Marching Cubes in Cylindrical and Spherical Coordinates",
  journal = "journal of graphics, gpu, and game tools",
  volume = "1",
  number = "1",
  pages = "21-31",
  year = "1996",
}