Volumetric Rendering with a C++ Ray Marcher

I’ve been working a lot recently with volumetric effects, and have decided to get a better understanding of how volumes are handled. I prefer to not post student work or media that is “unfinished” but have decided to post a few of these exercises from CPSC 8190 - Physically Based Effects, a class with Dr. Jerry Tessendorf. I didn’t come from a CPSC background, but am proud of the work that I have done in graduate school to acquire more technical knowledge. Dr. Tessendorf claims that it is the hardest course that Visual Computing has to offer and I’m blessed to have the opportunity to take it with him. Below are a few of the topics that we covered as well as media that I rendered as part of the class.

Some of the Functionality Implemented

Ray Marching Through a Volume + Rendering

Implicit Shapes / Gradients of Primitives

CSG Functions (Union, Subtract, Cutout, Shell)

Point Lights, Volume Emission, Colors

Gridded Volumes, Trilinear Interpolation, Signed Distance Functions

Reading an .OBJ file and converting to a SDF

Fractal Sum Perlin Noise, Pyroclastic Displacement, Wisps

Workflow Integration with Houdini Guidepoints

CSGs, OBJs, and Lights

Noise, Pyroclastic Displacement, and Wisp Wedges

Pyroclastic Displacement and Advection of Stanford Bunny (Lighting with Deep Shadow Maps)

We have covered several other topics, and I hope to integrate several of them at some point in the future. I found discussions of frustrum grids to be particularly interesting as something that I have not explored much yet, and have plans to continue working on my Houdini Wisp Tool that I made prior to this course as practice. If you have any questions on other topics that I have covered, feel free to reach out!