Practical Rendering of Multiple Scattering Effects in Participating Media
Simon Premoze, Michael Ashikhmin, Jerry Tessendorf, Ravi Ramamoorthi, and Shree Nayar
September, 2004
Eurographics Symposium on Rendering, H. W. Jensen and A. Keller (eds), 2004
Volumetric light transport effects are significant for many materials like skin, smoke, clouds, snow or water. In particular, one must consider the multiple scattering of light within the volume. While it is possible to simulate such media using volumetric Monte Carlo or finite element techniques, those methods are very computationally expensive. On the other hand, simple analytic models have so far been limited to homogeneous and/or optically dense media and cannot be easily extended to include strongly directional effects and visibility in spatially varying volumes. We present a practical method for rendering volumetric effects that include multiple scattering. We show an expression for the point spread function that captures blurring of radiance due to multiple scattering. We develop a general framework for incorporating this point spread function, while considering inhomogeneous media¿this framework could also be used with other analytic multiple scattering models.