25 July 2008 - 9:49Analytic Approaches to Single Scattering in Participating Medias

I am proud to finally publish my article concerning analytic approaches for rendering participating medias. Enjoy!

Abstract

An analytical approach toward visualization of participating media is presented. The volume rendering equation is considered under the assumption that the in-scattering integral can be sampled as a Dirac delta function in the direction of the illuminating light source. This assumption leads to a completely general result for isotropic homogeneous single scattering medias for which the airlight integral is shown to be a special case of. In addition, the limit for which a light source positioned far away is considered, which is particularly interesting in the case of ocean rendering.

The properties of the result are investigated and an approximate model for point light sources is proposed. The presented model is shown to approximate well for thin medias with a close light source and is suitable for real-time rendering. It is capable of simulating homogeneous translucent medias with a low albedo like marble, wax, skin, and smoke.

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Analytic Approaches to Single Scattering in Participating Medias (0.3MB)

References
[1] GREEN, S. 2004. Real-time approximations to subsurface scattering,
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems/gpugems_ch16.html.
GPU Gems, Chap 16.

[2] JENSEN, H. W. 2001. Realistic image synthesis using photon mapping.
A. K. Peters, Ltd., Natick, MA, USA.

[3] SUN, B., RAMAMOORTHI, R., NARASIMHAN, S. G., AND NAYAR, S. K. 2005.
A practical analytic single scattering model for real time rendering.
ACM Trans. Graph. 24, 3, 1040–1049.

[4] WENZEL, C. 2007. Real-time atmospheric effects in games revisited,
http://ati.amd.com/developer/gdc/2007/d3dtutorial_crytek.pdf.
GDC 2007.