All in GPU Real-Time 3D Cloud Simulation
Hui Li · Jisuanji fangzhen · 2009
An all-in-GPU cloud simulation framework was described that extended texture splatting on particles to model cloud types and exploited inherent parallelism of GPU to speed up the rendering of clouds.Using an editor,sharp and primitive shading of clouds were formed based on the textured particles and the structural and shading information were stored in files.In rendering stage,detailed information concerned with cloud was read into textures.Then,bitonic sorting algorithm on GPU was implemented to achieve the right alpha blend effect of textured particles.Using graphics API OpenGL,the cloud data were transferred from texture to vertex buffer object.Finally,geometry shader was used to sample the cloud parameter textures and construct geometry sharps in GPU to achieve the final render scene.The rendering shows rapid performance enhancement comparing with the normal CPU-GPU implementation.