Cinematic scientific visualization

Cinematic scientific visualization (CSV) is the visual presentation of scientific data in a way that is typically associated with non-scientific filmmaking techniques including cinematography, lighting, and composition. Cinematic scientific visualizations are often created for purposes of science communication to the general public, e.g. through museum exhibits and documentary films.[1] CSV is considered a subfield of scientific visualization, although the creation methods and visual outputs differ due to CSV's heavy emphasis on aesthetics and design.

## Differences from traditional scientific visualization

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Traditional scientific visualization and cinematic scientific visualization differ in a number of important ways:

Differences between traditional and cinematic scientific visualization  | Traditional Scientific Visualization | Cinematic Scientific Visualization

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Purpose  | Data analysis | Science communication
Audience  | Scientists | General public
Visual Style  | Didactic, diagramatic | Photorealistic, cinematic
Development Platform  | Scientific tools (e.g. ParaView, VisIt) | Visual effects software (e.g. Houdini, Autodesk Maya)

## History

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The first large scale broadly-distributed cinematic scientific visualization appeared in the IMAX film Cosmic Voyage in 1996, though at the time this was simply referred to as a "scientific visualization" without the "cinematic" qualifier.[2] The term "cinematic scientific visualization" was first published by Donna Cox in 2008 referring to work created by the Advanced Visualization Lab[3] and was popularized by Kalina Borkiewicz of the same lab who published a series of papers, conference presentations, and interviews on the topic beginning in 2017.[4][5][6][7][1] The term is now widely used to describe work done by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio,[8] Siemens Healthineers,[9] NVIDIA,[10] and others.

In 2014, the film Interstellar featured a cinematic scientific visualization of a physically-accurate black hole in a science fiction film.[11]

## References

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1. ^ a b Borkiewicz, Kalina; Christensen, AJ; Wyatt, Ryan; Wright, Ernest (2020). "Introduction to cinematic scientific visualization". ACM SIGGRAPH 2020 Courses. pp. 1–267\. doi:10.1145/3388769.3407502. ISBN 9781450379724. S2CID 221114537.
2. ^ Cox, Donna (1996). "Cosmic voyage: Scientific visualization for IMAX film". ACM SIGGRAPH 96 Visual Proceedings: The art and interdisciplinary programs of SIGGRAPH '96 on - SIGGRAPH '96. p. 129\. doi:10.1145/253607.253842. ISBN 0897917847. S2CID 5225761.
3. ^ Cox, Donna (2008). Astral Projection: Theories of Metaphor, Philosophies of Science, and the Art of Scientific Visualization (Thesis). University of Plymouth.
4. ^ Borkiewicz, Kalina; Christensen, AJ; Stone, John (2017). "Communicating science through visualization in an age of alternative facts". ACM SIGGRAPH 2017 Courses. pp. 1–204\. doi:10.1145/3084873.3084935. ISBN 9781450350143.
5. ^ Borkiewicz, Kalina; Naiman, J.P.; Lai, Haoming (2019). "Cinematic Visualization of Multiresolution Data: Ytini for Adaptive Mesh Refinement in Houdini". The Astronomical Journal. 158 (1): 10. arXiv:1808.02860. Bibcode:2019AJ....158...10B. doi:10.3847/1538-3881/ab1f6f. S2CID 51941852.
6. ^ Borkiewicz, Kalina (2019). "Why Cinematic Scientific Visualization is More Important Than Ever" (Interview). Interviewed by Morgan Manghera. ACM SIGGRAPH.
7. ^ Borkiewicz, Kalina (2021). "A Life of Its Own" (Interview). Interviewed by Vanessa Sochat. RSE Stories.
8. ^ Kostis, Helen-Nicole (July 30, 2019). Conversations at SIGGRAPH 2019: Helen-Nicole Kostis (Conference interview recording). Virtual: ACM SIGGRAPH.
9. ^ Making the impossible possible: Meet the team who brought Cinematic Rendering to the HoloLens (YouTube). July 11, 2020.
10. ^ Leaf, Nick (June 18, 2021). Cinematic Scientific Visualization with ParaView and Omniverse (Conference presentation recording). Virtual: NVIDIA GTC.
11. ^ James, Oliver; von Tunzelmann, Eugenie; Franklin, Paul; Thorne, Kip (2015). "Gravitational lensing by spinning black holes in astrophysics, and in the movie Interstellar". Classical and Quantum Gravity. 32 (6): 065001. arXiv:1502.03808. Bibcode:2015CQGra..32f5001J. doi:10.1088/0264-9381/32/6/065001.

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