Kiln

A WebGPU-native out-of-core volume rendering system for large virtualized volumetric datasets.

Kiln streams multi-gigabyte volumes over HTTP, rendering them at interactive framerates using a fixed-size VRAM page cache and virtual texture indirection.

Documentation: Usage Guide · Architecture · Rendering Pipeline · Data Guide · WebGPU Notes · References

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Chameleon CT Scan

2160.0 MB - 1024 × 1024 × 1080 @ 16-bit

Live Demo

Beechnut micro CT Scan (OME-Zarr)

3092.0 MB - 1024 × 1024 × 1546 @ 16-bit

Live Demo

Install

npm install kiln-render

import { KilnViewer } from 'kiln-render';

const canvas = document.querySelector('canvas')!;
const viewer = await KilnViewer.create(canvas, 'https://your-dataset.ome.zarr');

Requires a browser with WebGPU support. See the Usage Guide for the full API.

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Features

• Out-of-core streaming — Fixed VRAM footprint, SSE-based LOD selection, LRU brick cache
• OME-Zarr & Kiln binary — Stream from S3, CDN, or load local files (OME-Zarr v0.5, single-channel, uint8/uint16)
• Local filesystem — Load local .zarr / .ome.zarr directories via the File System Access API (Chrome/Edge)
• 16-bit support — Native r16unorm textures with window/level controls
• Compute shader raymarching — Brick-aware DVR, MIP, and isosurface rendering
• Transfer functions — Interactive curve editor with colour/opacity presets
• Clipping planes — Per-axis min/max clip in normalised 0–1 space
• Worker-based pipeline — Parallel decompression and brick assembly off the main thread

Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start development server (loads the bundled demo)
npm run dev

# Build demo for production
npm run build

# Build the library (outputs to lib/)
npm run build:lib

The demo loads a sample dataset from S3. To load custom datasets, see the Usage Guide.

Browser Requirements

Kiln requires WebGPU support:

• Chrome/Edge 113+
• Safari 26+
• Firefox 141+

Make sure hardware acceleration is enabled in your browser settings.

Sample Datasets

From the Open SciVis Datasets collection:

• Chameleon - CT scan of Chamaeleo calyptratus. Digital Morphology, 2003.
• Beechnut - MicroCT scan of a dried beechnut. Computer-Assisted Paleoanthropology, University of Zurich.
• Stag Beetle - Industrial CT scan. Meister Eduard Gröller, Georg Glaeser, Johannes Kastner, 2005.

License

Apache 2.0

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Note

Read the full write-up on dev.to

Partly Kiln builds upon my earlier work on volume rendering