A 3-D contextual shading method for visualization of diecasting defects

In many mechanical design-related activities, a visualization tool needs to convey not only the shape of the objects, but also their interior problem regions. Due to the binary nature of these models, existing shading models often fall short of supporting a realistic display. In this case study, we present several new contextual shading methods that we originally developed for our design visualization tools. The results are then compared with gray-scale shading applied to a gray-level version of the binary object. The comparison shows that our method can be applied to any binary object and yields promising results.