Visual simulation of clouds
- 1 July 1985
- journal article
- Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics
- Vol. 19 (3), 297-304
- https://doi.org/10.1145/325165.325248
Abstract
Clouds present serious problems to standard computer image generation techniques because clouds do not have well-defined surfaces and boundaries. In addition, clouds contain varying degrees of translucence, and their amorphous structure can change with time. Although several approaches to cloud simulation have produced impressive results, they have relied on complex mathematical models which produce high computation costs for a single image.This paper describes a new approach to cloud simulation using simple planar and curved surfaces whose surface shading and translucence are modulated by a mathematical texturing function. This approach represents the appearance of clouds with enough realism for a wide range of visual simulation but does so at a reasonable computational cost, allowing the generation of sequences of images on small minicomputers. In addition, the cloud model can be constructed in a straightforward manner.Keywords
This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit:
- Ray tracing volume densitiesACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, 1984
- Simulation of natural scenes using textured quadric surfacesACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, 1984
- The simulation of natural phenomena (Panel Session)ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, 1983
- Light reflection functions for simulation of clouds and dusty surfacesACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, 1982