SCEC Visualization Projects

SCEC Visualizations

SCEC researchers produce a wide variety of scientific movies and animations to help us better understand our research results and to convey these results to other scientists and the general public. SCEC Visualization Groups include SDSC, PSC, USC, and SCEC Interns. Below are links to resource providers and recent examples of their work.

Recent SCEC Visualizations

Fig 1: M8 Wave Propagation Movie

M8 Wave Propagation Animations:

M8 wave propagation simulations show the supershear M8 rupture and strong ground motions extending across much of southern California for this scenario event. More information on this simulation is posted on the M8 Project page.

M8 Wave Propagation Movie (140 MB)

Fig 2: M8 Velocity Mag as Height Field

M8 Wave Height Field Animations

M8 Wave Height Field movies provide another view of the M8 simulation results. These animations show M8 simulation ground motion intensity (velocity magnitude) as exaggerated local elevation.

Low res movie (65 MB)
HD movie (204 MB)

Fig 3: Ground Motion Vector Visualization (Narrated)

Vector Visualization Techniques

Vector Field with narration show new techniques for visualizing 4D vector fields. Work was done by Amit Chourasia and J.B. Minster with Emmett Mcquinn while Emmett worked as a SCEC Graduate Student Intern. Amit and Emmett presented their vector visualization work at a computer visualization conference SIGGRAPH2010. The final version HD version of this animation is more than 800MB is size and will be posted on request.

Vector Viz Animation (Preliminary) (199MB)
Narrated Animation (147 mb)
SDSC GlypSea Web Page

Fig 4: Virtual Shaker Results with M8 data in Northridge with building nodes color-scaled to peak displacement.

M8 Building Response using Virtual Shaker

We are working to compute and visualize building response to SCEC simulation ground motions. In this example, a 18 story steel frame building is shaken by M8 ground motions in the Northridge, California area. This is preliminary result that we hope to refine by SC10.