Real-Time Volumetric Rendering of Fire in a Production System: Feasibility Study

The thesis presents an effort at developing a robust, interactive framework for rendering 3-D fire in real-time in a production environment. Many techniques of rendering fire in non realtime exist and are constantly employed by the movie industry. Many of the systems developed for rendering fire in offline mode directly influenced and inspired real-time fire rendering, including this thesis. Macro-level behavior of fire is characterized by wind fields, temperature and moving sources and is currently processed on the CPU while micro-level behavior like turbulence, flickering, separation and shape is created on the graphics hardware. This framework provides a set of tools for level designers to wield artistic and behavioral control over fire as part of the scene. The resulting system is able to scale well, to use as few processor cycles as possible, and to efficiently integrate into an existing production environment. The focus in this work is on testing the feasibility of rendering fire volumetrically within the constraints of a real 3D engine production system. Performance statistics are collected, the concepts presented in previous work on volumetric fire rendering are tested and the feasibility of achieving interactive frame rates within a 3D engine framework is assessed.