Abstract

This work addresses the problem of rendering clouds. The task of rendering clouds is important to film and video game directors who want to use clouds to further the story or create a specific atmosphere for the audience. While there has been significant progress in this area, other solutions to this problem are inadequate because they focus on speed instead of accuracy, or focus only on a few specific properties of rendered clouds while ignoring others. Another common shortcoming with other methods is that they are not integrated into existing rendering pipelines. We propose a solution to this problem based on creating a point cloud to represent the cloud volume, then calculating light scattering events between the points. The key insight is blending isotropic and anisotropic scattering events to mimic realistic light scattering of anisotropic participating media. Rendered images are visually plausible representations of how light interacts with clouds.

Degree

College and Department

Physical and Mathematical Sciences; Computer Science

Rights

http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/