Dense glyph sampling for visualization

Abstract

We present a simple and efficient approach to generate a dense set of anisotropic, spatially varying glyphs over a two-dimensional domain. Such glyph samples are useful for many visualization and graphics applications. The glyphs are embedded in a set of nonoverlapping ellipses whose size and density match a given anisotropic metric. An additional parameter controls the arrangement of the ellipses on lines, which can be favorable for some applications, for example, vector fields and distracting for others. To generate samples with the desired properties, we combine ideas from sampling theory and mesh generation. We start with constructing a first set of nonoverlapping ellipses whose distribution closely matches the underlying metric. This set of samples is used as input for a generalized anisotropic Lloyd relaxation to distribute samples more evenly.