Synthetic Images of Underwater Scenes: A First Approximation

The creation and rendering of realistic water scenes is one of the challenging tasks in Computer Graphics. To reproduce the illumination and colour inside water bodies an algorithm capable of dealing with media with anisotropic and multiple scattering has to be used. We have chosen the discrete ordinates method to solve the problem of light transport. Both the theoretical basis and the algorithm that has been implemented are described in the paper. A couple of simple images calculated in different waters are presented. Results indicate the relevant role played by the spectral behaviour of the absorption and scattering coefficients in the process of image generation