Three-dimensional Seismic Data Field Visualization Footprinting

The 3-D seismic data contains abundant information of terrane. In the past, there is not appropriate method which displays 3-D data, so people had to display 3-D seismic data with many seismic sections and horizontal slices. This method leads to the loss of much information, and people had realized this problem many years ago, therefore they advanced the suggestion that explain 3-D data by using 3-D method.3-D visualization is a new technique of seismic interpretation. It is based on Computer Graphics and Image manipulation technology, and the 3-D seismic data will be changed graphics image, which is displayed on the screen for interactive processing. It has greatly improved the accuracy and efficiency of seismic interpretation, and made the final results more reliable and intuitive.There are two classes of volume rendering: surface volume rendering and direct volume rendering (simply called volume rendering ). In the techniques of seismic interpretation, volume rendering is an important research topic, which has much research value and future application.Footprint method is an object-based direct volume rendering method. It brings both higher efficiency and better result.This paper mainly researches footprint algorithm of direct volume rendering, and introduces detailedly footprint algorithm which based on parallel projection. Then, it analyses the influences of each factor in the process of footprint method. Under VC++ 6.0 development environments on Microsoft Windows XP platform, I have worked out the application which can realize footprint method of 3-D seismic data.