Visualization of Smoke and Fire Data Based on the Fire Dynamics Simulation Model

This thesis presents a technique to visualize smoke and fire data generated from the NIST Fire Dynamics Simulation model using Monte-Carlo single and multiple scattering. I use established physics to extract the necessary data to visualize the smoke. The major challenge in smoke rendering with the fire simulation data is that the simulation resolution is not high enough for the visual effects of radiation occlusion. Standard volume lighting methods do not work well for fire since extensive areas can radiate as light sources, making the rendering prohibitively expensive. The proposed concepts of voxel lighting and spherical lighting mimic blackbody radiation in a unit area, approximating area diffuse lights with a sampling of point lights. I address this computational challenge with a selective light sampling scheme based on distance for fire smoke, and additionally with importance sampling of multiple scattering directions. This thesis also provides some analysis of a multiple scattering scheme based on Metropolis-Hasting sampling