Modeling Aventurescent Gems with Procedural Textures

Figure 1: Examples of gemstones that exhibit aventurescence, and that have been rendered using the methods described in this paper. The beads on the necklace that is draped on the drinking glass in the leftmost image are examples of Sunstone, a genuine mineral that is sought after for its ephemeral, amber-like appearance with glittering inclusions. The middle image is a close-up of several beads, while the picture on the right shows a silver ring with a gem made from black aventurescent glass. In this paper we present the results of an investigation on how one can model aventurescence, an interesting and optically appealing property of some gemstones. Our goal was to find a method that is both efficient and reasonably realistic, and that can still be used in the context of a global illumination rendering system