Synthesizing Verdant Landscapes using Volumetric Textures

Abstract: Volumetric textures are able to represent complex repetitive data such as foliage, fur and forests by storing one sample of geometry in a volumetric texel to be mapped onto a surface. This volume consists in samples of densities and reflectances stored in voxels. The texel can be prefiltered similarly to the mipmapping algorithm, giving an efficient rendering in ray-tracing with low aliasing, using a single ray per pixel. Our general purpose is to extend the volumetric texture method in order to provide a convenient and efficient tool for modeling, animating and rendering highly complex scenes in ray-tracing. In this paper, we show how to convert usual 3D models into texels, and how to render texels mapped onto any mesh type. We illustrate our method with verdant landscapes such as forests and lawns.