GPU Pro 6

5

II

Sparse Procedural

Volume Rendering

Doug McNabb

5.1 Introduction

The capabilities and visual quality of real-time rendered volumetric effects dis-

proportionately lag those of film. Many other real-time rendering categories have

seen recent dramatic improvements. Lighting, shadowing, and postprocessing

have come a long way in just the past few years. Now, volumetric rendering

is ripe for a transformation. We now have enough compute to build practical

implementations that approximate film-style effects in real time. This chapter

presents one such approach.

5.2 Overview of Current Techniques

There are many different kinds of volumetric effects, and games render ...