| Research Abstract |
The research topic of this project is to display realistic rendering of natural phenomena by using Computer Graphics technology. We focus on sky, clouds, smoke, desert scenes and atmospheric effects, such as shafts of light. These phenomena have the common feature that they are consist of the effects of small particles. This research includes the following elements (1) modeling of optical property of natural phenomena, (2) dynamics of natural phenomena, (3) interactive display system of natural phenomena, and (4) evaluation of system performance by using animation.
For (1), some of material in real world consists of particles such as sands, air molecules, and water vapor. To create realistic images, physical based simulation and rendering are required. In particular, the color greatly depends on the properties of light scattering due to particles. For (2), the modeling process includes the creation of shapes of objects, their dynamics and their physical properties such as surface reflectance Therefore, a lot of modeling methods have been developed to address this problem. Using these methods, however, obtaining realistic-looking shapes and motion is very time consuming. For the simulation of fluid dynamics for smoke, cellular automata for cloud motion and sand dunes. For (3), the processing speed of graphics hardware has become faster and faster recently. In addition, high performance graphics hardware is available even on low-end PCs. These facts have encouraged us to develop hardware-accelerated methods for rendering realistic images. For (4), we have created the animation videos of natural phenomena
As a result, we have written nine papers related to this project.
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