XDL-VIZ3D: 3D Volume Visualization

High-fidelity 3D visualization engine for scientific simulations using WebGPU.

Features

• Volume Ray Marching: GPU-accelerated volume rendering
• Interactive Navigation: Arcball camera with mouse/keyboard controls
• Scientific Colormaps: Viridis, Plasma, Rainbow, Turbo, and more
• Isosurface Extraction: Render iso-contours of 3D scalar fields
• Cross-Platform: Runs on Metal, Vulkan, DirectX 12, and WebGPU
• Web Export: Compile to WebAssembly for browser visualization

Quick Start

From XDL Scripts

; rayleigh_taylor.xdl - Create and visualize 3D volume data

; Create 3D volume
size = 64
density = FLTARR(size, size, size)

; Fill with data
FOR i=0, size-1 DO FOR j=0, size-1 DO FOR k=0, size-1 DO $
    density[i,j,k] = EXP(-((i-32)^2 + (j-32)^2 + (k-32)^2) / 400.0)

; Initialize and render
VIZ3D_INIT, WINDOW_SIZE=[1280, 720]
VIZ3D_COLORMAP, 'VIRIDIS'
VIZ3D_VOLUME, density, DIMENSIONS=[size, size, size]
VIZ3D_RENDER, /INTERACTIVE

Run Demo

# From XDL project root
xdl examples/demo/volume_render_simple.xdl

# Or the full Rayleigh-Taylor simulation
xdl examples/demo/rayleigh_taylor.xdl

Architecture

XDL Script (.xdl)
    ↓
xdl-stdlib (VIZ3D_* functions)
    ↓
xdl-viz3d (Rust rendering engine)
    ↓
wgpu (WebGPU abstraction)
    ↓
GPU (Metal/Vulkan/DX12/WebGPU)

API Functions

Core Functions

• VIZ3D_INIT - Initialize visualization system
• VIZ3D_VOLUME - Upload volume data to GPU
• VIZ3D_RENDER - Render current volume
• VIZ3D_COLORMAP - Set colormap
• VIZ3D_CAMERA - Configure camera
• VIZ3D_TRANSFER - Set transfer function
• VIZ3D_ISOSURFACE - Extract and render isosurface

See docs/VIZ3D_IMPLEMENTATION.md for full API documentation.

Examples

Simple Volume

examples/demo/volume_render_simple.xdl - Basic Gaussian blob

Rayleigh-Taylor Instability

examples/demo/rayleigh_taylor.xdl - Full fluid dynamics simulation

Building

# Build the crate
cargo build --release -p xdl-viz3d

# Run tests
cargo test -p xdl-viz3d

# Build for WebAssembly
cargo build --target wasm32-unknown-unknown --release -p xdl-viz3d

Implementation Status

• Project structure and Cargo setup
• Demo XDL scripts created
• Implementation plan documented
• Core rendering engine
• Camera system
• Volume ray marching shaders
• Colormap system
• stdlib integration
• WebAssembly export

See TODO list for remaining work.

Performance

Expected performance on modern GPUs:

Dependencies

• wgpu - GPU abstraction layer
• winit - Cross-platform windowing
• glam - Linear algebra
• bytemuck - Safe GPU data casting

Contributing

See main XDL project Contributing section.

License

GPL-2.0 (same as XDL project)