MS Thesis Defense

Real-time Realistic Rendering of Sunrise and Sunset on the Ocean

Yuping Zhang

10:00am Monday, 9 February 2015, ENG 005

The aim of this thesis is to study advanced real-time realistic rendering techniques for outdoor natural scenes. Much research has been done for rendering realistic outdoor scenes, such as sky, ocean, terrain, etc. But sunrise and sunset are rarely discussed. Interesting phenomena like the sun mirages during sunset and sunrise could create splendid visual effects.

This thesis presents a method to render sun mirages. It uses precomputed atmospheric refraction profiles for different atmosphere condition and performes ray tracing to render the sun deformation. Combined with other methods, it renders sunrise and sunset on the ocean in real time. It simulates realistic sun mirages, sky color, ocean waves and lighting, which can be useful for realistic scenes in movies, video games or for scientific simulators.

Program Committee: Drs. Marc Olano (Chair), Penny Rheingans, Jian Chen