Production-Ready GPU-Based Monte-Carlo Volume Rendering
Christof Rezk‐Salama · 2007
This paper presents a practical, high-quality, hardware-accelerated volume rendering approach including scattering, environment mapping, and ambient occlusion. The motivation for this technique is the increasing demand among visual artists who create computer animations for information and educational purposes. In the paper we examine the application of stochastic raytracing techniques for volume rendering and provide a fast GPU-based prototype implementation. In addition, we propose a simple phenomenological scattering model, closely related to the Phong illumination model that many artists are familiar with. We demonstrate our technique being capable of producing convincing images, yet flexible enough for digital productions in practice. We show examples of multi-pass volume rendering techniques suitable for digital arts and educational systems based on tomographic scans of real objects. Index Terms—Volume rendering, Monte-Carlo integration, scattering, GPU-raycasting.