Visual simulation of lightning taking into account cloud growth
Batjargal Sosorbaram, Tadahiro Fujimoto, Kazunobu Muraoka, Norishige Chiba · 2002
Simulation of weather scenery in computer graphics (CG) is an important issue that has a wide range of applications related to image content, such as in movies and in various landscape simulations. In general, research to date into CG lightning has focused on generating a lightning pattern by applying probability and statistics techniques, which do not consider the generating mechanism of lightning. In natural lightning, an electrical-discharge path (stepped leader) is generated under the influence of an electric field formed by electrification of a cloud. We present a method that generates a lightning pattern by simulating a stepped leader in an electric field defined by placement of electric charges. We also give rendering methods for lightning in a cloud that are based on the volume rendering method using point light sources.