Visualization
To better understand the mechanisms being modeled by the ANU-CTM,
sophisticated visualization techniques were utilized to produce an
animated graphical representation of the data. Air parcels contain
varying radioactive tracer concentrations as they disperse from the
release point in Turkey and mix with other air parcels. In this
visualisation only the 500 most concentrated air parcels are plotted,
from the simulation set of 100,000. The air parcels are rendered as
spheres with concentration mapped to colour, size and
transparency. The daily data is spaced 10 frames apart, with the
positions of the air parcels being interpolated through intermediary
frames. This accounts for the regular bouncing motion seen in the
animation. The height scale is exaggerated to show the
topographic and field data more clearly.
We used the animation package Houdini produced by SideFX to visualize the simulation
results. The data was precalculated and the model was previewed in
real-time on a Silicon Graphics Oynx Reality Engine workstation
provided the ANU
Supercomputer Facility Vizlab. Final images were rendered on the
ANUSF SGI Power Challenge. The
resulting animation was output to video from Avid Illusion and a
smaller, shorter version of the simulation was produced as well with
one day represented as a single frame, suitable for viewing on the
World Wide Web.
Model results...
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