Importing external voxel data

Hi!

I’m looking for a way of importing external voxel data (if this is the correct term) into Blender for use as density data in a volumetric shader (preferably cycles). I have 3D data in a homogeneous grid, and would like to use the value at each point as a density value to create something that looks like a fog or smoke. I’m going to apply the shader to an isosurface that has been generated in Paraview.

Right now I have the data in Matlab, but I can imagine exporting it into csv, some format Paraview can export to, doing something in python etc… I just don’t understand which data structure Blender would accept. I’ve seen that Blender has support for importing stacks of images as a basis for voxel data, but it feels like there should be an easier way than to make images of each slice of my 3D volumes.

Does anyone have any ideas of where to start? Very grateful for any suggestions!

/Kajsa

Check this: http://blendersushi.blogspot.ru/2012/01/data-question-on-point-cloud-and-voxel.html
May be it could help. But may be not =) Good luck!

I have a probably easier but related question. I want to sample a mesh at a predetermined grid, and to output the coordinates. It’s like using the PDB exporter but I don’t have atoms represented as named grids, I just have normal Blender meshes.