
Smoothed-Particle Hydrodynamics Post-Processing & Visualization Using ParaView: a Survey
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Smoothed-particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulation is a mesh-free method to simulate solid mechanics or fluid flows by approximating their volume with a set of particles and computation kernels. Hence the output of these simulations is usually a large set of points with associated values such as velocity or pressure. Due to the mesh-free nature of this method, their post-processing and visualization raise challenges to reconstruct the actual volume and extract significant features like interface surface or critical values. This paper surveys the current and future post-processing methods of SPH simulations using ParaView, a reference tool to visualize and explore scientific data at scale. To visualize the millions of particles that SPH simulations can produce, ParaView can discretize particles and their density function over a regular grid, a surface or a line using a point interpolator. This enables using classic visualization techniques such as iso-contours or slicing. We also discuss other indirect rendering methods that can be used in ParaView, such as surface extraction and convex hulls, and introduce GPU representation methods, for direct and efficient rendering of particles over time, using gaussian points, volume rendering and ray tracing. Finally, this paper provides an overview of particle rendering methods not yet available in Paraview, such as volume rendering using SPH kernels, metaballs, and data parallel processing algorithms on the GPU, for in situ rendering of large-scale SPH simulations.