volume rendering for artists

https://www.scratchapixel.com/lessons/advanced-rendering/volume-rendering-for-artists
keywords: volume rendering, ray-marching, cloud rendering, scattering, in-scattering, transmittance, absorption coefficient, scattering coefficient, mean cosine, phase function, isotropy, anisotropy.

it is worth mentionning that this lesson will contain a lot of concepts and techniques already described in the lesson on subsurface scattering. if u are interested in volume rendering u will probably find it useful to read the lesson on subsurface scattering as well.

structure of this lesson
rendering volumes such as fog, fire, clouds, smoke, and even skies etc. is slight more complicated than rendering solid objects whether these objects are transparent or not. in order to simulate their appearance it is necessary to study the complex phenomeons that take place when light interacts with matter (light transport in volumes also called participating media in the CG literature). these phenomeons are the same when light interacts with solid objects however in the case of solid objects they can can be greatly simplified. in the case of volumes, they can not ignored nor simplified if the goal is to get a visually realistic image. to render volumes we usually need to use algorithms which are different from those we use to compute solid objects. parameters to control the appearance of volumes, are also different from the controls we typically use to adjust the appearance of solid objects. for instance, solid objects color is usually controlled through a color parameter (known as the diffuse color or the albedo if the object is diffuse in appearance). the color of volumes on the other hand, is controlled through scattering and absorption coefficients (which we will explain soon). these differences can be disconcerting to an artist. the lesson aims at explaining these terms in an intuitive way. the next lesson will aim at providing information on volume rendering to readers with a background in programming. information will be given about the ray marching algorithm which is the most common technique used to render volumes.

writing this lesson on volume rendering is an opportunity for us to pay tribute 致敬 to the work done by the CG pointer Ken Musgrave. he is one of the first persons to have released the source code of a simple ray-marcher on the internet in the earyly 90s and he has certainly been an inspiration for Scatch-pixel. we are glad to work in the continuity of people from the CG community who thought that sharing their knowledge for free on the internet was gooding thing. Mugrave’s code was explained in the book Texture and Modeling: a Procedural Approach (a long time classic) which he co-authored wiht other famous researchers from the filed (D.Ebert, K.Perlin, D.Peachey,S.Worley). this program which we ran on SGI machines at the time, helped many of us understand the basic of volume rendering. we recently recompiled the code and rendered with it this image of a cloud on a blue background. the process of rendering volumes using a computer is truly mesmerising 迷人 and one these things that made many of us addicted to CG.

what is really happening to a beam of light hitting a particle?
from now on we will enter the realm of what is called in science, scattering. the phenomenons we will describe now applies to all kind of obejcts no matter what u consider them to be made of: molecules, solid or liquid particles, solid objects, etc. when light hits an atom of matter for instancde, energy carried out by this light is tranferred to the obstacle that then radiates this energy back in all directions (radiation). this effect is called the radiated scattering on the object. however the incident light energy can also be transformed into some other forms (such as thermal energy); this process is called absorption.

Figure 1: a photon hitting an atom (or a particle) can either be absorbed (its energy can be for instance converted into heat) or scattered back into the world in a random direction.

that is obviously a simplistic statement, but all there is to really know about the topic of light-matter interaction for this lesson, is the phenomenon of scattering and absorption. if u are interesting in learing more about hte topic we suggest u make a search on the web for Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) which attemps at explaining ijntersting questions such as why an atom absorbs or scatters in photon.

the phenomenon involues electrons and photons. electrons spins around the nucleus of atoms. to move from a lower to a higher of energy, electrons need to gain energy. reciprocally, when electrons move from a higher to a lower energy level, they release energy. when a photon interacts with an object, three things can happen. the photon might be absorbed by the object. in exchange, its energy is transfered to he object in the form of an electron jumping to a higher level of energy. the object might also reflects the photon. the energy from the photon is given to the object which re-emits a photon of identical energy. finally the photon might pass through the object without interacting with it at all. this is known as transmission.