News Archive
- 2 Papers accepted at IEEE Visualization 201118.07.2011: Two papers have been accepted at IEEE Visualization 2011. Our work on the perceptual influence of advanced volume rendering techniques, as well as our image plane sweep volume illumination paper will both be presented at VisWeek this year.
- Voreen 3.0 in September22.06.2011: It has been now almost eight months since the last public Voreen release has been published here. This news entry is just to inform you, that we are further working hard on Voreen. We will release the shiny new Voreen version 3.0 by the end of September 2011. As always it will have great new features and some beautifully reengineered components, which among others allow a more comfortable handling of volumes and images.
- Honorable Mention Dirk Bartz Price 201113.06.2011: We have received a honorable mention in the Dirk Bartz price for visual computing in medicine. The price is given out in biannual competition by the Eurographics Association to acknowledge the contribution that computer graphics is playing in the medical field. You can learn more about the price in the EG 2011 program (page 33).
- Paper accepted at IEEE Pacific Vis 201113.12.2010: Our paper entitled "Context-Aware Volume Navigation" has been accepted to be presented at this year's IEEE Pacific Visualization symposium. Stefan Diepenbrock will give the presentation.
- Voreen 2.6.1 Maintenance Release04.11.2010: The 2.6.1 release is ready for download. Besides bug fixes and minor GUI improvements, it adds support for 16-bit per channel canvas snapshots. Please see the Changelog for details. Special thanks go to Aqeel Al-Naser for providing a volume reader for the SEG-Y format!
- Voreen 2.6: Plotting, Scripting and GLSL Parsing19.10.2010: We have just released Voreen 2.6. It adds a plotting toolbox that contains several multi-dimensional plot types as well as function fitting. Furthermore, we have revised the Python interface, which now provides full read/write access to processor properties. You may want to have a look at the Python editor integrated in VoreenVE as well as the samples in data/scripts. The "DynamicGLSLProcessor" supports shader-based rapid prototyping through GLSL parsing. Please see the Changelog for further information.
- Voreen 2.55 released17.09.2010: Voreen 2.55 is ready for download. Besides several improvements in the user interface and bug fixes, it contains a preview of the upcoming plotting feature. Please refer to the Changelog for details. To further simplify the module handling, the module registration header is now auto-generated, removing the need to manually register custom modules. Please consult the module tutorial on how to adapt your modules to the new version.
- IEEE Vis Contest 2010: And the winner is ... Voreen
08.09.2010:
We are very excited to announce that our entry "Pre-Operative Planning of Brain Tumor Resections" has been awarded first prize in this year's IEEE Visualization Contest. The proposed system, which has been implemented based on the Voreen framework, integrates several multimodal 2D and 3D views in order to provide an interactive workflow for neurosurgical planning. Further information including a video is available on the publication webpage.
- IEEE CG&A Paper accepted13.08.2010: Our paper on advanced volume illumination with unconstrained light source positioning has been accepted to be published in IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications. You can find some information about the paper at the publication webpage.
- DIY Vis Applications Tutorial05.08.2010: Voreen will be presented within the DIY Vis Applications tutorial at this year's IEEE Visualization conference. The tutorial discusses how to use ParaView, VTK, Protovis, VisTrails and Voreen in order to generate custom visualization applications.
- Paper accepted at IEEE Vis 201016.07.2010: Our paper entitled "Uncertainty-Aware Guided Volume Segmentation" has been accepted to be presented at this year's IEEE Visualization conference. Jörg-Stefan Praßni will give the presentation.
- Voreen 2.5 out now13.07.2010:
We have just released Voreen 2.5. It contains several new features, such as animation scripting, multi-volume rendering, aggregation of subnetworks and much more. For a complete list of features, please have a look at the Changelog. To make Voreen more modular, we have revised the directory structure as well as the module concept. Please see Adding-a-Module on how to generate your own modules containing custom processors.
- Gallery Updates21.04.2010: We have added some rendering results from our most recent papers to the gallery.
- 3 Papers accepted at VG 201029.03.2010: Three papers have been accepted to the IEEE/EG International Symposium on Volume Graphics 2010. The papers deal with GPU-based lossless compression of large volumes, efficient computation of local histograms as well as advanced material properties. See our publication section for more details.
- Voreen 2.01 maintenance release
01.02.2010: Several smaller issues were fixed in this maintenance release (see the changelog for details). Special thanks to all the people who sent in feedback and bug reports!
There is a new example workspace in the workspace section that demonstrates the Flowreen flow visualization component of Voreen using 3D streamlines.
- Voreen 2.0 released
23.12.2009: We are very proud to announce the best Voreen release so far: Voreen 2.0! We have invested a lot of work in the past months to integrate several new features and to re-engineer some of the existing concepts. Among other things, we have added native support for multiple view applications by providing a multi canvas mechanism as well as supporting linking between properties. Furthermore, we have improved the volume handling, the serialization framework and we have added several new processors. Additionally, developing your own processors became more easy. Be sure to read the processor conversion guide in the FAQ section, in order to adapt your old processors. As usual, you can find a detailed list of all changes in the changelog. However, many of the new concepts are now also demonstrated in the new tutorial video section. So please feel free to test Voreen 2.0, and do not hesitate to contact us regarding your feedback! Merry Xmas and a happy new year!
P.S.: The christmas tree scene is based on the data set provided by Vienna University of Technology and has been rendered using an animated Voreen workspace scene, which you can download in the new workspace section.
- Voreen 1.71 maintenance release
20.11.2009: We have just released a new Voreen snapshot. This release does not contain any new features, but several bug fixes. Among others, we have improved bricking of large data sets, which now requires less memory, and we have integrated multiple Mac bug fixes. Additionally, we have enabled building Voreen with MinGW, which allows you to use Qt Creator for development. For a complete list of all bug fixes, please see the changelog. Thanks a lot to all users who have helped us to identify these bugs! As usual, installers for Windows and Mac are available in the download section. Of course, you can also update your working copy via our Subversion repository. Unfortunately, there are still some issues with some ATI graphics cards, where artifacts may appear, when enabling the "Camera inside the volume" feature.

Please also watch out for our upcoming Voreen 2.0 release. Within that release we will provide convenient development functionality for multi-view applications. Furthermore, we will provide processors allowing to do basic flow visualization and much more. On a technical level, we have eliminated the messaging system and simplified the implementation of the port concept. We plan and hope to be able to release Voreen 2.0 next month.
- Two papers accepted at PacificVis 201016.11.2009: Two papers have been accepted to be presented at IEEE PacificVis 2010. You can follow the links to get a first look on our shape-based transfer function approach, or the novel volumetric illumination method.
- Website relaunch02.11.2009: We have relaunched the Voreen website with the goal to allow a better orientation and easier access to the content. Check it out!
- Voreen presented in IEEE CG&A04.09.2009: An overview describing the concepts behind Voreen as well as the technical realizations appeared in IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. Please cite this article when using Voreen in your research papers. You may find additional information at the associated webpage.
- VMV Paper accepted04.09.2009: Our paper on efficient boundary detection and transfer function design has been accepted to be presented at this year's VMV conference. Check out the associated webpage for more details.
- Snapshot release adds support for large data sets
04.08.2009: The latest Voreen snapshot release adds support for visualizing volume data sets much larger than the available GPU memory, by subdividing the volume into bricks and switching their resolution based on the camera position. The size of the CT scan of a mouse shown on the right is 2 GB, but the bricking uses only 250 MB of GPU memory in this case. While the feature is still very much experimental, we managed to interactively visualize data sets with a size of up to 16 GB. See the changelog for how to use it, as well as for further improvements in this release.Besides the source release and Windows installer, there is now also a Mac application bundle available in the download section. There is now a small getting started guide on how to use VoreenVE, you can find it in the 'Help' menu of the application.
- Vis Paper accepted18.07.2009: Our paper on multimodal vessel visualization (which uses Voreen) has been accepted to be presented at this years IEEE Visualization conference.
- Gallery Update10.07.2009: We have some new images in our gallery section. The images show some effects of the upcoming SIGGRAPH course on advanced volume illumination as well as the current Voreen user interface in action.
- New Snapshot Release
06.07.2009:
A new snapshot release of Voreen is available via our public SVN server, and also as a Windows installer version in the download section of our website. Again, the release contains multiple improvements as compared to the previous version of Voreen. Some highlights are:
- Integrated application development by providing a development mode and a visualization mode. Within the development mode, a developer may edit networks and choose which properties should be editable in a final application. In the visualization mode the visualization can be tuned by editing the visible properties.
- Introduction of the workspace concept, where the status of the current application is serialized, including loaded network, data sets and property values.
- Improved transfer function editor to support 1D and 2D transfer functions.
- Integrated volume preprocessing processors. See volumeinversion.vnw for a basic example network.
- Added ZIP support for handling multiple volume data sets.
- Newly designed user interface.
As usual, we are keen on getting your feedback regarding possible improvements.
- Course at SIGGRAPH 200923.04.2009: We will present a course on advanced illumination techniques for GPU-based volume raycasting at SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans. The presenters will be: Markus Hadwiger, Timo Ropinski, Patric Ljung and Christof Rezk-Salama.
- EGUK TPCG Paper16.04.2009: A paper on multimodal closeup visualization, which describes the outcome of a cooperation with the Visualization group in Bergen, Norway and the University Hospital in Bergen, Norway, has been accepted at EGUK Theory and Practice of Computer Graphics 2009.
- EG 2009 Tutorial Notes online19.02.2009: The website for the Eurographics 2009 tutorial on "GPU-Based Volume Ray-Casting with Advanced Illumination" is now online. At the website you also find the tutorial notes. You'll find the website at www.voreen.org/eg09-tutorial.
- New Voreen snapshot released13.02.2009: We have once again prepared a snapshot of the Voreen source code. As release highlights we would like to point out the redesigned GUI for the VoreenVE application and the label rendering (there is an example file in the Data Sets section, see the changelog for how to load it). Additionally, the Mac support was improved, though there are still some issues with ATI graphics cards on this platform. You can find more details in the changelog. The Subversion repository has moved to a new, less complicated URL, see the download page. This release requires Qt 4.3 (but 4.4 is highly recommended) and GLEW 1.5.
- Course at Eurographics 200919.12.2008: The course on advanced illumination techniques for GPU-based volume raycasting has been accepted for presentation at Eurographics 2009. The course is conducted by researchers from the VRVis Research Centre in Vienna, Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, the University of Siegen and the University of Münster.
- Siggraph Asia Course Notes online18.11.2008: The course notes for the tutorial on 'GPU-based volume ray-casting with advanced illumination' at Siggraph Asia 2008 are now ready to be downloaded at http://www.voreen.org/siggraphasia08-course.
- Source snapshot updated14.11.2008:
The source distribution of Voreen available though our public Subversion repository was updated with many feature improvements and bug fixes. Highlights include a new modular volume raycaster with multiple shading and gradient calculation modes, multiplanar slice rendering and clipping widgets. Please see the changelog for details.
- Tutorial Update01.11.2008: We have updated our Programming Tutorials. The tutorials on GPU-based raycasting, volume management and integrating Voreen into GLUT programs are now up to date for Voreen 1.5. The remaining programming tutorials will be updated soon.
- Vis Paper online29.10.2008: Our IEEE Visualization paper on glyph-based SPECT visualization is now online. You may download it in the publications section.
- Gallery updated28.10.2008: We have just updated the gallery and included visualizations from recent publications based on Voreen.
- Vis Tutorial Slides online27.10.2008: The slides for the tutorial 'GPU-based volume ray-casting with advanced illumination' at IEEE Visualization 2008 are now online at http://www.voreen.org/vis08-tutorial.
- Voreen 1.5 beta released with Subversion access26.09.2008: Voreen 1.5 beta has been released and is ready for download. It includes advanced data set handling and a visual programming environment for creating rendering networks (see the video tutorial). For Windows users we also provide a binary version in the download section. Please note that we are still in the process of updating the documentation on this site for the new release.
- Tutorials at IEEE Vis and SIGGRAPH Asia20.08.2008: A tutorial about illumination techniques for volume raycasting also featuring Voreen will be held at the upcoming IEEE Visualization conference as well as at SIGGRAPH Asia.
- Papers at VG0812.07.2008: Two papers have been accepted to IEEE/EG Symposium on Volume Graphics 2008.
- New article about Voreen10.07.2008: Updates in In the Press section: Voreen supports MS Wissenschaft.
- Video Tutorials02.05.2008: Added new video tutorials.
- New getting started section12.04.2008: Added new getting started section.
- Voreen 0.8 beta released11.04.2008: Voreen 0.8 beta was released as open source.