Yoshinori Dobashi

A simple, efficient method for realistic animation of clouds

This paper proposes a simple and computationally inexpensive method for animation of clouds. The cloud evolution is simulated using cellular automaton that simplifies the dynamics of cloud formation. The dynamics are expressed by several simple transition rules and their complex motion can be simulated with a small amount of computation. Realistic images are then created using one of the standard graphics APIs, OpenGL. This makes it possible to utilize graphics hardware, resulting in fast image generation. The proposed method can realize the realistic motion of clouds, shadows cast on the ground, and shafts of light through clouds.

Display of clouds taking into account multiple anisotropic scattering and sky light

Methods to display realistic clouds are proposed. To display realistic images, a precise shading model is required: two components should be considered. One is multiple scattering due to particles in clouds, and the other factor to be considered is sky light. For the former, the calculation of cloud intensities has been assumed to be complex due to strong forward scattering. However, this paper proposes an efficient calculation method using these scattering characteristics in a positive way. The latter is a very significant factor when sky light is rather stronger than direct sunlight, such as at sunset/sunrise, even though sky light has been ignored in previous methods. This paper describes an efficient calculation method for light scattering due to clouds taking into account both multiple scattering and sky light, and the modeling of clouds. CR Categories and Subject Descriptors:

Interactive rendering of atmospheric scattering effects using graphics hardware

To create realistic images using computer graphics, an important element to consider is atmospheric scattering, that is, the phenomenon by which light is scattered by small particles in the air. This effect is the cause of the light beams produced by spotlights, shafts of light, foggy scenes, the bluish appearance of the earths atmosphere, and so on. This paper proposes a fast method for rendering the atmospheric scattering effects based on actual physical phenomena. In the proposed method, look-up tables are prepared to store the intensities of the scattered light, and these are then used as textures. Realistic images are then created at interactive rates by making use of graphics hardware.

A method for modeling clouds based on atmospheric fluid dynamics

The simulation of natural phenomena such as clouds, smoke, fire and water is one of the most important research areas in computer graphics. In particular, clouds play an important role in creating images of outdoor scenes. The proposed method is based on the physical simulation of atmospheric fluid dynamics which characterizes the shape of clouds. To take account of the dynamics, we used a method called the coupled map lattice (CML). CML is an extended method of cellular automaton and is computationally inexpensive. The proposed method can create various types of clouds and can also realize the animation of these clouds. Moreover, we have developed an interactive system for modeling various types of clouds.

A Modeling and Rendering Method for Snow by Using Metaballs

The display of natural scenes such as mountains, trees, the earth as viewed from space, the sea, and waves have been attempted. Here a method to realistically display snow is proposed.

A Quick Rendering Method Using Basis Functions for Interactive Lighting Design

When designing interior lighting effects, it is desirable to compare a variety of lighting designs involving different lighting devices and directions of light. It is, however, time‐consuming to generate images with many different lighting parameters, taking interreflection into account, because all luminances must be calculated and recalculated. This makes it difficult to design lighting effects interactively. To address this problem, this paper proposes a method of quickly generating images of a given scene illustrating an interreflective environment illuminated by sources with arbitrary luminous intensity distributions. In the proposed method, the luminous intensity ditribution is expressed with basis functions. The proposed method uses a series of spherical harmonic functions as basis functions, and calculates in advance each intensity on surfaces lit by the light sources whose luminous intensity distribution are the same as the spherical harmonic functions. The proposed method makes it possible to generate images so quickly that we can change the luminous intensity distribution interactively. Combining the proposed method with an interactive walk‐through that employs intensity mapping, an interactive system for lighting design is implemented. The usefulness of the proposed method is demonstrated by its application to interactive lighting design, where many images are generated by altering lighting devices and/or direction of light.

Fast Particle‐based Visual Simulation of Ice Melting

The visual simulation of natural phenomena has been widely studied. Although several methods have been proposed to simulate melting, the flows of meltwater drops on the surfaces of objects are not taken into account. In this paper, we propose a particle‐based method for the simulation of the melting and freezing of ice objects and the interactions between ice and fluids. To simulate the flow of meltwater on ice and the formation of water droplets, a simple interfacial tension is proposed, which can be easily incorporated into common particle‐based simulation methods such as Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics. The computations of heat transfer, the phase transition between ice and water, the interactions between ice and fluids, and the separation of ice due to melting are further accelerated by implementing our method using CUDA. We demonstrate our simulation and rendering method for depicting melting ice at interactive frame‐rates.

Feedback control of cumuliform cloud formation based on computational fluid dynamics

Clouds play an important role for creating realistic images of outdoor scenes. In order to generate realistic clouds, many methods have been developed for modeling and animating clouds. One of the most effective approaches for synthesizing realistic clouds is to simulate cloud formation processes based on the atmospheric fluid dynamics. Although this approach can create realistic clouds, the resulting shapes and motion depend on many simulation parameters and the initial status. Therefore, it is very difficult to adjust those parameters so that the clouds form the desired shapes. This paper addresses this problem and presents a method for controlling the simulation of cloud formation. In this paper, we focus on controlling cumuliform cloud formation. The user specifies the overall shape of the clouds. Then, our method automatically adjusts parameters during the simulation in order to generate clouds forming the specified shape. Our method can generate realistic clouds while their shapes closely match to the desired shape.

Precomputed radiance transfer for dynamic scenes taking into account light interreflection

Fast rendering of dynamic scenes taking into account global illumination is one of the most challenging tasks in computer graphics. This paper proposes a new precomputed radiance transfer (PRT) method for rendering dynamic scenes of rigid objects taking into account interreflections of light between surfaces with diffuse and glossy BRDFs. To compute the interreflections of light between rigid objects, we consider the objects as secondary light sources. We represent the intensity distributions on the surface of the objects with a linear combination of basis functions. We then calculate a component of the irradiance per basis function at each vertex of the object when illuminated by the secondary light source. We call this component of the irradiance, the basis irradiance. The irradiance is represented with a linear combination of the basis irradiances, which are computed efficiently at run-time by using a PRT technique. By using the basis irradiance, the calculation of multiple-bounce interreflected light is simplified and can be evaluated very quickly. We demonstrate the real-time rendering of dynamic scenes for low-frequency lighting and rendering for all-frequency lighting at interactive frame rates.

Unbiased, adaptive stochastic sampling for rendering inhomogeneous participating media

Realistic rendering of participating media is one of the major subjects in computer graphics. Monte Carlo techniques are widely used for realistic rendering because they provide unbiased solutions, which converge to exact solutions. Methods based on Monte Carlo techniques generate a number of light paths, each of which consists of a set of randomly selected scattering events. Finding a new scattering event requires free path sampling to determine the distance from the previous scattering event, and is usually a time-consuming process for inhomogeneous participating media. To address this problem, we propose an adaptive and unbiased sampling technique using kd-tree based space partitioning. A key contribution of our method is an automatic scheme that partitions the spatial domain into sub-spaces (partitions) based on a cost model that evaluates the expected sampling cost. The magnitude of performance gain obtained by our method becomes larger for more inhomogeneous media, and rises to two orders compared to traditional free path sampling techniques.