A Brief Note on Building Augmented Reality Models for Scientific Visualization

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new pipeline that enables scientists to create and visualize augmented reality models from finite element simulation data using open-source tools, making AR more accessible for scientific visualization.

Contribution

The authors present a novel, accessible pipeline utilizing ParaView, Blender, and <model-viewer> to create AR models from scientific data, with open-source scripts for automation.

Findings

Pipeline successfully visualizes finite element results in AR.

Compatible with static and time-series simulation data.

Accessible via smartphones on Android and iOS.

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) has revolutionized the video game industry by providing interactive, three-dimensional visualization. Interestingly, AR technology has only been sparsely used in scientific visualization. This is, at least in part, due to the significant technical challenges previously associated with creating and accessing such models. To ease access to AR for the scientific community, we introduce a novel visualization pipeline with which they can create and render AR models. We demonstrate our pipeline by means of finite element results, but note that our pipeline is generally applicable to data that may be represented through meshed surfaces. Specifically, we use two open-source software packages, ParaView and Blender. The models are then rendered through the <model-viewer> platform, which we access through Android and iOS smartphones. To demonstrate our pipeline, we build AR models from static and time-series results of finite element simulations discretized with continuum, shell, and beam elements. Moreover, we openly provide python scripts to automate this process. Thus, others may use our framework to create and render AR models for their own research and teaching activities.