"Scientific Data on Surfaces" by Nicole Feng at Blender Conference 2026

I'm a computer scientist working in "geometric computing", meaning I develop algorithms for working with geometric data like meshes, curves, and point clouds. In many projects, I've needed to accurately visualize data that lives on curved surfaces: Blender makes lighting, shading, and materials easy, but accurately communicating the behavior of a particular surface quantity, as it bends and wraps around 3D shapes, takes a little care. This talk is a short tour of basic techniques I've picked up for rendering surface quantities like scalar and vector fields, and also how I use Blender to help with scientific illustrations.

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Learn more about Blender Conference 2026 at https://conference.blender.org/2026/