Scientific datasets are not always the best match for Blender's creative focus. Preprocessing scientific data into a separate Blender scene is not always optimal, especially large and complex datasets. And not all types of data can be efficiently rendered in Blender. Volumetric data especially poses challenges given current limitations in Cycles.

But among open-source tools Blender is unmatched in its workflow and UI, certainly compared to often-used scientific tools. So a combination of Blender's great user experience and 3D functionality with a way of efficiently handling scientific datasets is a very interesting combination. BLOSPRAY is a first step in this direction, by integrating the OSPRAY visualization library from Intel as a new renderer in Blender.

In this presentation Paul Melis will show what the initial release of BLOSPRAY can do and how it compares to regular Blender + Cycles.