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310 Materials and Nanotechnology | Progress Report

Materials Characterization reality interfaces as Oculus Rift, Google Card-
and Visualization board, LEAP Motion, multi-touch devices and

3D printing technologies (Figure 42). CW can be
accessed online at http://cw.gl from desktop,
Scientific Visualization in Materials mobile and tablet devices and video demos

and its source code is available at the project
The Research Group for Scientific Visualization website at http://gvcm.co/CrystalWalk.
in Materials (GVCM) is part of the Materials
Science and Technology Center (CCTM). It was
formed in 2009 responding to a need for a
multidisciplinary space for sharing research
and ideas related to Scientific Visualization,
Virtual Reality, Computational Simulation
and advanced teaching methodologies for
the study of Materials Science. Although de-
tailed ongoing initiatives are available online
at (http://gvcm.ipen.br/), from 2014 to 2016,
GVCM has been focused mainly on two key
research projects: CrystalWalk (CW) and Grain-
Crawler (GC).

Figure 41: Fluorite (CaF ) structure in different mode views: (a) motif
2
CW is a web-based 3D interactive crystal ed- formed by one calcium atom (green) and two Fluorine atoms (yellow
itor and visualization software designed for and red); (b) Cropped unit cell (c) full unit cell; (d) crystal.
teaching materials science and engineering
aiming to provide an easy to use and acces-
sible platform to students, professors and re-
searchers. Aligned with the material sciences
and engineering curricula, CW introduces a
new simplified approach that creates crystal
structures by combining a lattice with a motif
using solely translational symmetry. Although
very restrictive from the crystallographic point
of view, CW makes it simple for students to
experiment, reproduce and visualize, in an
interactive manner, most of the crystal struc-
tures that are commonly introduced in mate- Figure 42: Advanced Interaction Support using Oculus Rift (head
rials science and engineering curricula, like mounted display) and Razer Hydra (tracked joysticks).
fluorite structure shown in figure 41. CW is
open-source and accessible, integrating state- Leveraging CW’s technological premises, GC is
of-the-art technologies for interactive web a web-based 3D interactive visualization soft-
applications, such as HTML5/WebGL, service ware sought to improve spatial understanding
oriented architecture (SOA) and responsive, of grain structures. Based on solid cognitive
resilient and elastic distributed systems and and learning research, GC introduces novel do-
support to advanced interaction and virtual main-specific tools that support capturing fun-

Instituto de Pesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares