Bachelor's Thesis: Volume Rendering of Meteorological Simulation Data

I have recently finished my Bachelor’s Thesis on integrating two different volume lighting methods in Met.3D, a free and open source application for visualizing meteorological simulation data. The thesis is now available under Publications.

Abstract

This thesis presents the integration of two different volume lighting methods to be used for visualization of meteorological simulation data, in particular cloud data, in Met.3D, an open-source visualization application for meteorological uses. The first method is primarily a visuals-based approach, which simulates single scattering and imitates certain visual phenomena appearing in real-world clouds. The second, while generally requiring more computational effort, is a specific implementation of the photon mapping algorithm and directly simulates multiple scattering by tracing photons through the volume. It takes advantage of the Henyey-Greenstein function in order to be able to only use 3D textures as the data structure of the photon map. We use our implementations of these methods to produce a number of images and analyze them with respect to visual outcome, physical accuracy and performance. In addition, we compare images created with the photon mapping method to results that were generated using MFASIS, a method to simulate radiative transfer of clouds.