Improved Color Mapping: A feature of SVOffice 2009

April 29, 2009

Before: Rainbow colormapsAfter: Gradients and multiple levels

Have a look at the two screenshots above. Which one shows your water table better?

This is a simple demonstration of the new color mapping improvements recently added to SVOffice 2009. These new colormaps are tailored to each product in the SVOffice suite, to handle specific tasks. They are all gradient colormaps, which use 256 color levels to better visualize rapid changes in your numerical data. The SVFlux example above (found in our software as Ponds > Pstr01.svm) demonstrates a bi-level colormap, which use two gradients: one shows positive pore-water pressure values, and the other one shows negative values. This makes the water table line really stand out!

There are currently three bi-level colormaps to choose from: blue/brown, blue/green, and green/brown. All use zero as a threshold value, to clearly distinguish between positive and negative values.

Rainbow colors can mislead the eye: is green hotter or cooler than blue?True color temperatures add dramatic impact and are easy to interpret

Another exciting addition is the temperature colormap. This colormap is derived from scientific black-body color temperatures, which lead to very intuitive visualization results. Have a look a the SVHeat example above: the model on the right is easy to interpret and requires no special knowledge to understand what the colors mean.

Another great addition to SVOffice 2009 is a red concentration colormap. This colormap is ideal for visualizing contaminant transport, as shown in this short animation (1.5 MB AVI). This is a classic example that models the flow of a plug of contaminant released into the ground, and is part of our ChemFlux tutorial manual (listed as ContaminantPlumes > VanderHeijde.svm).

These new colormaps are a standard part of our AcuMesh visualization package. To select a colormap, use the Plot > Contours dialog and click on the Color Map tab. This dialog also controls other aspects of your visualization; feel free to experiment!

For more information on this feature, feel free to contact us directly, or download our student version and try them out for yourself!

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