When simulating reservoir data in the oil industry the eclipse format is often used to store both the results of and the model for the simulation. This format however is not very well suited for visualization, because among other features it includes redundant information and stores the data in non-regular grids. This has implications with regards to the time and space required to simplify the polygonal representation of each channel (reduce number of faces and vertices) and remove artifacts such as overlapping faces. To solve this problem we have developed a method which simplifies the polygonal representation of the eclipse-data and stores the result as wavefront objects. The theoretical complexity of this algorithm has been found and the real-world difference in running time, storage usage and result has been compared to a simple conversion which does not simplify and does not remove artifacts. The results were good, with up to larger than 90% removal of faces and vertices. As well as a removal of most visual artifacts.

Image showing the removal of artifacts of the simplifying method as compared compared to the trivial method:

[1] Øystein Pettersen, ResSimNotes, http://www.uib.no/People/fciop/Downloads/MAT354/Notes/ResSimNotes.pdf, 2011.

Supervisor: Endre M. Lidal
Project Report: Here