Visual Parameter Exploration in GPU Shader Space

Information

• Publication Type: Journal Paper with Conference Talk
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • ViMaL: A Visualization Mapping Language
• Date: 2013
• Journal: Journal of WSCG
• Volume: 21
• Number: 3
• Location: Plzen, Czech Republic
• Lecturer: Peter Mindek
• ISSN: 1213-6972
• Pages: 225 – 234
• Keywords: shader augmentation, parameter space exploration

Abstract

The wide availability of high-performance GPUs has made the use of shader programs in visualization ubiquitous. Understanding shaders is a challenging task. Frequently it is dif?cult to mentally reconstruct the nature and types of transformations applied to the underlying data during the visualization process. We propose a method for the visual analysis of GPU shaders, which allows the ?exible exploration and investigation of algorithms, parameters, and their effects. We introduce a method for extracting feature vectors composed of several attributes of the shader, as well as a direct manipulation interface for assigning semantics to them. The user interactively classi?es pixels of images which are rendered with the investigated shader. The two resulting classes, a positive class and a negative one, are employed to steer the visualization. Based on this information, we can extract a wide variety of additional attributes and visualize their relation to this classi?cation. Our system allows an interactive exploration of shader space and we demonstrate its utility for several different applications.

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BibTeX

@article{mindek-2013-pel,
  title =      "Visual Parameter Exploration in GPU Shader Space",
  author =     "Peter Mindek and Stefan Bruckner and Peter Rautek and Eduard
               Gr\"{o}ller",
  year =       "2013",
  abstract =   "The wide availability of high-performance GPUs has made the
               use of shader programs in visualization ubiquitous.
               Understanding shaders is a challenging task. Frequently it
               is dif?cult to mentally reconstruct the nature and types of
               transformations applied to the underlying data during the
               visualization process. We propose a method for the visual
               analysis of GPU shaders, which allows the ?exible
               exploration and investigation of algorithms, parameters, and
               their effects. We introduce a method for extracting feature
               vectors composed of several attributes of the shader, as
               well as a direct manipulation interface for assigning
               semantics to them. The user interactively classi?es pixels
               of images which are rendered with the investigated shader.
               The two resulting classes, a positive class and a negative
               one, are employed to steer the visualization. Based on this
               information, we can extract a wide variety of additional
               attributes and visualize their relation to this
               classi?cation. Our system allows an interactive exploration
               of shader space and we demonstrate its utility for several
               different applications.",
  journal =    "Journal of WSCG",
  volume =     "21",
  number =     "3",
  issn =       "1213-6972",
  pages =      "225--234",
  keywords =   "shader augmentation, parameter space exploration",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2013/mindek-2013-pel/",
}