Visualization at The University of Iowa Judith R. Brown Numbers come to life in the visualization lab tbr Advanced Research Computing Services (ARCS). This modest: lab is part of Weeg Computing Center at The University of Iowa and serves a steadily growing corps of researchers from many disciplines. With the realities of universitybudgets, we started very small, showed the need and the possibilities, and have slowly expanded to meet further needs. These have created new possibilities and new needs for expansion. Success is measured by insight, by Masters and PhD theses enhanced or enabled by the research visualization, by external funding gained through increased understanding, and by visuals produced for journals and presentations. Success is also measured by the educational value of the research as it is brought back to the students, and as the students participate in the process. Our "visualization lab" began with a MacintoshTM IIx with an Ethernet connection and the public domain visualization software from National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). This was sufficient to quickly produce some still images and an animation from forest fire data that would enable the funding agencies to understand the data. These crude visualizationsresulted in further funding for the project and awakened others to the value of visualization. Our visualization lab now contains three Macintosh II series computers, one of which has a video board and a VHS/S-VHS video recorder and monitor. These Macintoshes have a combination of SpyglassTM, Aldus PersuasionTM, and NCSA visualization software. These are used most heavily by mechanical engineering and hydraulics graduate students who produce images of vector flow fields and animations of flame simulations, fluid mixing, sedimentation, and coofing of metal alloys. In addition to these computational fluid dynamics applications, we support such varied applications as the visualization of random cellular automata in mechanical engineering, visualization of the process for optimizing airline scheduling in management science, visualization of an algebraic compiler in computer science, and visualizationof how affective memory influencesvoting behavior in political science. Our work with constraint-basedrobotic movement is described in more detail below. We also have two UNIXTM workstations now, an IBM RS6000TM and a Digital Equipment Corporation DECStation 5000TM with additional two and three dimensional software: AliasTM from Alias Research, Inc., PV-WAVETM from Precision Visuals, Inc., and Application Visualization Software TM (AVS) from Stardent. We have only begun to tap the potential of the PV-WAVE and AVS software on the DECStation, but we've had the Alias software for the RS6000 on an educational donation for a year, which has given us time to appreciate its value for both research and education. The following images from Professor Joe Kearney's constraintbased robotic simulationsrepresent one example of our visualization applications. The motion for these animations was generated through the mechanical simulationsystem, Newton, which formulates and iteratively solves the dynamic equations of motion from a description of the model, and the visualization was done with Alias. This application demands three-dimensional modeling, rendering, and animationto see and understandthe motion. Advanced rendering capabilities, including transparency and shadows, are essential to understanding the movement. Figure 1 is a composite of selected frames from an animation of a robotic figure doing a flip, and Figure 2 is a frame from an animation of a brigade of eight marching robots moving in groups of four. Both simulations were created by Kearney and Stu Hansen in computer science, and the visualization was done with Alias on an IBM RS6000 by John Knaack, ARCS. These figures were originally in color, although they are reproduced here in black and white. These animations have been put onto videotape, presented at international conferences, and shown in the classroom. The educational value of the visualization is so evident that one of Kearney's classes is using the Alias software this semester. It is possible for this class of twenty students to use a single workstation because the class is divided into teams with staggered projects, and the workstation is in a lab that is accessible to authorized users at any time. This class use has worked so well that we plan to have a class of design students use the workstation and Alias software next semester. Now our greatest need is the ability to get high quality videos from our animations. We currently have only the ability to record live from animationson the Macintosh, so the quality is significantly less than what is initially, produced with Alias. This constraint is strictly budgetary. The technology exists, and it is discussed in this issue in the article "Navigating the Video Maze." The ARCS Visualization Lab provides excellent service to University of Iowa faculty, staff and students, within budgetary limitations. Our researchers have also used the national centers, such as NCSA and San Diego Supercomputer Center, on occasion for the presentation quality visuals we are unable to provide, and we help them gain access to these valuable resources. I anticipate that a small lab such as ours will always benefit from services provided by the larger national centers. Figure 1: Frames from an animation of a robot doing a flip Figure 2: A brigade of eight marching robots 182/Computer Graphics • VoLume 26 ° Number 3 • August 1992

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