Visualizing Seismic

Owned by Erlend Kvinnesland
Last updated: Dec 09, 2013
4 min read

Introduction

The vast amount of seismic display commands and color tables, together with the flexibility of the graphical window makes Geocap a great tool for visualizing seismic. For example it is often useful to utilize multiple windows to display a base map in one window and displaying seismic lines from the base map in 3D, in the second window. Read more about: Graphics Window.



In this section:

Display 2D seismic in graphical window

The Display Outline command draws a frame around the seismic line.

The Seismic Display command is used for displaying regular 2D seismic.

Use the Seismic Annotate command to annotate the seismic in X and Z direction. The seismic annotate menu provides options for:

  • Displaying the dataset name.
  • Defining an interval in X and Z direction.
  • Displaying the unit in X and Z direction.
  • Changing text settings.

Use the Seismic Wiggle Display command to display the seismic traces. The commands menu let you define the trace interval, the wiggle factor, width and color among others.

Display 2D seismic in cross section viewer

Any seismic line, including lines that are not straight, can be viewed in 2D by using the cross section window.

The cross section window can be opened from: Windows > New > Cross Section Window

To load a seismic line into the cross section window click the small triangle next to the   icon and click browse cross section. Then browse for the seismic line you want to view.

Interpretation, and crossing lines can also be displayed on top of the seismic by clicking the   icon and browsing for the dataset.

Display LOD 3D seismic in graphical window

The Seismic Brick Cube can be displayed with the LOD Seismic Display 3D command. This command provide you with full control over an arbitrary cut plane through the cube:

  • The three buttons marked Inline preset, Cross preset and Time preset will align the cut plane with the conventional inline, crossline or timeslice.
  • The three sliders marked Inline, Cross and Time moves the cut plane in their respective dimmensions.
  • The slider marked Angle 2 rotate the cut plane around the time axis and the slider marked Angle 1 around an axis perpendicular to the time axis.
  • The two sliders marked Size 1 and Size 2 can be used to specify the size of the cut plane.
  • The Scale slider in the Amplitude group box scales the amplitude values before color table lookup.

Display 3D seismic in graphical window

The main command for displaying Seismic Cube is Seismic Display 3D. The command provides you with two main options; Regular display or Mesh display. The mesh display option lets you display a custom number of inlines, crosslines and time slices in a mesh. Regular display lets you pick one slice to display; inline, crossline and time slice. You can type in the slice number in the spin box or use the slider to select a specific slice. Other options:

  • Keep display - Keeps previously displayed slices when displaying a new slice, so that several slices are displayed at the same time.
  • Auto update display - Updates the graphical window every time you change parameters in the command.
  • Show seismic cube manipulator - Displays a gray frame in the graphical window that can be dragged to where you want to display a slice.
  • Display slice at cursor position - Displays a slice where you last set your cursor position. (Set cursor position by clicking y on the keyboard)

Geocap offers a few commands for the most common set of display options from the Seismic Display 3D command. They are:

  • Mesh 2x2
  • Mesh 5x5
  • Inline at Cursor pos.
  • Crossline at Cursor pos.

These commands can be found under the Additional Display folder on the right-click menu.

Color tables and seismic

When displaying seismic, Geocap will use the active seismic color table as default. It is important to understand how a typical seismic color table works. Almost always, the seismic color table moves from one color to white to another color. Examples are Orange - White - Black, or Red - White - Black. The result is always that the negative wiggle gets one color, the positive the other, and the transition becomes white. Be aware that sometimes, the assignment of colors can be wrong. The result is usually that the seismic becomes too light or too dark. The way around this is to change the relationship between the color table range and data range.

However, if all the seismic lines in your project all seem to have the same problem, it can become tedious to always have to adjust the color table range when displaying. In this case, it is more efficient to change the parameter settings for the color table itself.

Read more about editing color tables and adjusting map range in: Color Tables.