Rendering and Animation of Gaseous Phenomena by Combining Fast Volume and Scanline A-Buffer Techniques

This paper describes a new technique that efficiently combines volume rendering and scanline a-buffer tech-niques. This technique is useful for combining all types of volume-rendered objects with scanline ren-dered objects and is especially useful for rendering scenes containing gaseous phenomena such as clouds, fog, and smoke. The rendering and animation of these phenomena has been a difficult problem in computer graphics. A new algorithm for realistically modeling and an-imating gaseous phenomena is presented, providing true three-dimensional volumes of gas. The gases are modeled using turbulent flow based solid textur-ing to define their geometry and are animated based on turbulent flow simulations. A low albedo illu-mination model is used that takes into consideration self-shadowing of the volumes