MaterialVis: Material visualization tool using direct volume and surface rendering techniques

•Representation of material structures as a volume and a surface manifold, in addition to plain atomic coordinates.•A wide range of functionality to visualize topological structures and crystal defects interactively.•Direct volume rendering techniques to visualize the volumetric features of materials, such as crystal defects.•Hidden topological feature extraction for embedded nanostructures.

Visualization of the materials is an indispensable part of their structural analysis. We developed a visualization tool for amorphous as well as crystalline structures, called MaterialVis. Unlike the existing tools, MaterialVis represents material structures as a volume and a surface manifold, in addition to plain atomic coordinates. Both amorphous and crystalline structures exhibit topological features as well as various defects. MaterialVis provides a wide range of functionality to visualize such topological structures and crystal defects interactively. Direct volume rendering techniques are used to visualize the volumetric features of materials, such as crystal defects, which are responsible for the distinct fingerprints of a specific sample. In addition, the tool provides surface visualization to extract hidden topological features within the material. Together with the rich set of parameters and options to control the visualization, MaterialVis allows users to visualize various aspects of materials very efficiently as generated by modern analytical techniques such as the Atom Probe Tomography.

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