Non-photorealistic Visualization Of Protein Molecules

Bioinformatics will become one of the most important scientific research areas in the 21st century, which mainly studies on Genomics and Proteomics. Protein is the foundation of life. With the help of computer graphics and related technologies, visualization of protein molecules aims to make the observation and analyse process of microstructures visible, precise and predictable.To illustrate structure information of protein molecules in a clearer way, we propose an illustration style non-photorealistic visualization method of protein molecules. Other than traditional protein visualization methods, our method presents a whole new visualization effect and provides more information to biological researchers. We implement an elementary visualization system for protein molecules (MNV: Molecular Non-photorealistic Visualization). The MNV system comprises four rendering modules for several common protein structure graphical representations, including image-based rendering module for ball-stick and VDW model, silhouette rendering module and illustration/sketch rendering modules for ribbon and surface model. Experimental results show that our non-photorealistic visualization techniques can achieve real-time speed for complex proteins on plain hardware platform. Furthermore, as MNV system adopts traditional illustration style to reveal more specific structure information of protein molecules, it is easier for researchers to accept its visualization effect.