Particle-based simulation of fluids

Journal ArticleDue to our familiarity with how fluids move and interact, as well as their complexity, plausible animation of fluids remains a challenging problem. We present a particle interaction method for simulating fluids. The underlying equations of fluid motion are discretized using moving particles and their interactions. The method allows simulation and modeling of mixing fluids with different physical properties, fluid interactions with stationary objects, and fluids that exhibit significant interface breakup and fragmentation. The gridless computational method is suited for medium scale problems since computational elements exist only where needed. The method fits well into the current user interaction paradigm and allows easy user control over the desired fluid motion

Closed-form approximations to the volume rendering integral with Gaussian transfer functions

technical reportIn direct volume rendering, transfer functions map data points to optical properties such as color and opacity. We have found transfer functions based on the Gaussian primitive to be particularly useful for multivariate volumes, because they are simple and rely on a limited number of free parameters. We show how this class of transfer function primitives can be analytically integrated over a line segment under the assumption that data values vary linearly between two sampled points. Analytically integrated segment can then be composited using standard techniques

Approximate Ambient Occlusion For Trees

International audienceNatural scenes contain large amounts of geometry, such as hundreds of thousands or even millions of tree leaves and grass blades. Subtle lighting effects present in such environments usually include a significant amount of occlusion effects and lighting variation. These effects are important for realistic renderings of such natural environments; however, plausible lighting and full global illumination computation come at prohibitive costs especially for interactive viewing. As a solution to this problem, we present a simple approximation to integrated visibility over a hemisphere (ambient occlusion) that allows interactive rendering of complex and dynamic scenes. Based on a set of simple assumptions, we show that our method allows the rendering of plausible variation in lighting at modest additional computation and little or no precomputation, for complex and dynamic scenes

Geospecific Rendering of Alpine Terrain

. Realistic rendering of outdoor terrain requires both that the geometry of the environment be modeled accurately and that appropriate texturing by laid down on top of that geometry. While elevation data is widely available for much of the world and many methods exist for converting this data to forms suitable for graphics systems, we have much less experience with patterning the resulting surface. This paper describes an approach for using panchromatic aerial imagery to produce color views of alpine scenes. The method is able to remove shading and shadowing effects in the original image so that shading and shadowing appropriate to variable times of day can be added. Seasonal snow cover can be added in a physically plausible manner. Finally, 3--D instancing of trees and brush can be added in locations consistent with the imagery, significantly improving the visual quality. 1 Introduction Sophisticated techniques exist for converting real-world elevation data into a terrain..

A Microfacet-based BRDF Generator

A method is presented that takes as an input a 2D microfacet orientation distribution and produces a 4D bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF). This method differs from previous microfacet-based BRDF models in that it uses a simple shadowing term which allows it to handle very general microfacet distributions while maintaining reciprocity and energy conservation. The generator is shown on a variety of material types

A Lighting Model for General Participating Media

Efficient and visually compelling reproduction of effects due to multiple scattering in participating media remains one of the most difficult tasks in computer graphics. Although several fast techniques were recently developed, most of them work only for special types of media (for example, uniform or sufficiently dense) or require extensive precomputation. In this paper we present a lighting model for the general case of inhomogeneous medium and demonstrate its implementation on programmable graphics hardware. It is capable of producing high quality imagery at interactive frame rates with only mild assumptions about medium scattering properties and a moderate amount of simple precomputation