Modeling and Rendering of Various Natural Phenomena Consisting of Particles

The simulation of various natural phenomena is one of the important research fields in computer graphics. In particular, aspects such as sky, clouds, water, fire, trees, smoke, terrains, desert scenes, snow and fog are indispensable for creating realistic images of natural scenes, flight simulators and so on. Therefore, a lot of researchers have been trying to develop methods for simulating and rendering these. In this paper, we focus on sky, clouds, smoke, desert scenes and atmospheric effects, such as shafts of light. These phenomena have the common feature that they are consist of the effects of small particles. To create realistic images, physical based simulation and rendering are required. In particular, the color greatly depends on the properties of light scattering due to particles. In general, however, the simulation and rendering of these images is assumed to be very time-consuming. This paper describes efficient methods for creating realistic images of such natural phenomena.