A Scalable and Production Ready Sky and Atmosphere Rendering Technique. (20th July 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hillaire, Sébastien
• Is Part Of: Computer graphics forum. Volume 39:Number 4(2020)
• Page Start: 13
• Page End: 22
• Publication Date: 2020-07-20
• Subjects: CCS Concepts -- Computing methodologies → Rasterization -- Ray tracing; Computer graphics -- Periodicals; 006.605
• DOI: 10.1111/cgf.14050
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0167-7055

Abstract

Abstract: We present a physically based method to render the atmosphere of a planet from ground to space views. Our method is cheap to compute and, as compared to previous successful methods, does not require any high dimensional Lookup Tables (LUTs) and thus does not suffer from visual artifacts associated with them. We also propose a new approximation to evaluate light multiple scattering within the atmosphere in real time. We take a new look at what it means to render natural atmospheric effects, and propose a set of simple look up tables and parameterizations to render a sky and its aerial perspective. The atmosphere composition can change dynamically to match artistic visions and weather changes without requiring heavy LUT update. The complete technique can be used in real‐time applications such as games, simulators or architecture pre‐visualizations. The technique also scales from power‐efficient mobile platforms up to PCs with high‐end GPUs, and is also useful for accelerating path tracing.