In graduate school one of my favorite topics to work on, with one of my graduate advisors (Dr. Robbins) at North Carolina State University (NCSU), was rendering stereoscopic (3-D) images. Several of these rendered images are posted below. The sample data comes from a scanning tunneling microscope and atomic force microscope, provided by the Material Science department of NCSU. If you have red-blue glasses handy, these 3-D images are fun.

This 3-D stereoscopic image is of gold atoms:

Here is just the left-eye image:

This 3-D stereoscopic image is of an emzyme:

Here is the left-eye image:

This 3-D stereoscropic image is of graphite:

Here is the left-eye image:

Presentations:

These images were presented at SPIE (International society for optics and photonics) conference, in the 3-D stereoscopic section.

More Details:

The rendering engine was written mostly by me in C, though I didn’t write the core of the triangle shader. This software rendering engine is capable of traingulation of sample data, followed by Phong, Gouraud and flat shading of these triangle. Complete 3-D rotations and perspective are supported, as well as generation of left and right images. Flight path can also be specified to generate a fly through.