Abstract

Sunlight and skylight are rarely rendered correctly in computer graphics. A major reason for this is high computational expense. Another is that precise atmospheric data is rarely available. We present an inexpensive analytic model that approximates full spectrum daylight for various atmospheric conditions. These conditions are parameterized using terms that users can either measure or estimate. We also present an inexpensive analytic model that approximates the effects of atmosphere (aerial perspective) . These models are fielded in a number of conditions and intermediate results verified against standard literature from atmospheric science. Our goal is to achieve as much accuracy as possible without sacrificing usability. Keywords: sunlight, skylight, aerial perspective, illumination High quality color plates of Figures 1, 9 and 11 are attached at the end of the paper. 1 Introduction Most realistic rendering work has dealt with indoor scenes. Increased computing power and ubiquitou...

Citations