Context
In Amira-Avizo, surfaces and volumes can be colorized in different ways depending on the type of information to be displayed and the objective of the analysis.
Distance visualization is particularly useful when the objective is to evaluate the spatial relationship between two surfaces. For example, you may need to assess the gap between two components, compare two surfaces after an alignment workflow, verify wall thickness variations, inspect clearance between assembled parts, compare a manufactured part with a reference geometry, or identify regions where two surfaces are too close or too far apart.
Instead of relying only on numerical measurements, mapping the distance values directly onto a surface using a colormap provides an immediate visual indication of areas that meet or exceed a given tolerance.
The workflow below shows how to compute and visualize the distance between two surfaces using a colormap.
1. Load two nearly aligned datasets and create the corresponding surfaces
1.1 Load the tutorials datasets <your installation folder>\data\tutorials\lobus.am twice.
1.2 Rotate the second dataset using the Transform Editor. For more information, refer to the documentation or the Xtra How to Use the Transform Editor.
1.3 Attach an Isosurface module to each dataset, set the threshold to 75, and click Apply.
1.4 Extract both surfaces using the Extract Surface module. If necessary, simplify the surfaces as described in KA-01376 / How to Generate and Simplify a Surface.
2. Compute the distance between the two surfaces
2.1 Attach a Surface Distance module to the first surface, ExtractedSurface.
2.2 Connect the Surface2 port to the second surface, ExtractedSurface(2).
2.3 Configure the parameters according to your analysis requirements and click Apply.
3. Display the surface colorized by distance
3.1 Attach a Surface View module to the first surface, ExtractedSurface.
3.2 Set Surface View > Data > ColorField to the generated distance result.
The viewer on the right displays the distance from the first surface to the second surface. With the selected colormap, areas farther from the second surface are displayed using progressively warmer colors, for example, toward red.
Related Links
For more information on colormap management, refer to the following Xtras: