Production Volume Rendering Design and Implementation

Due to limited publicly available software and lack of documentation, those involved with production volume rendering often have to start from scratch creating the necessary elements to make their system work. Production Volume Rendering: Design and Implementation provides the first full account of volume rendering techniques used for feature animation and visual effects production. It covers the theoretical underpinnings as well as the implementation of a working renderer. The book offers two paths toward understanding production volume rendering. It describes: Modern production volume rendering techniques in a generic context, explaining how the techniques fit together and how the modules are used to achieve real-world goals Implementation of the techniques, showing how to translate abstract concepts into concrete, working code and how the ideas work together to create a complete system As an introduction to the field and an overview of current techniques and algorithms, this book is a valuable source of information for programmers, technical directors, artists, and anyone else interested in how production volume rendering works. Web ResourceThe scripts, data, and source code for the book’s renderer are freely available at https://github.com/pvrbook/pvr. Readers can see how the code is implemented and acquire a practical understanding of how various design considerations impact scalability, extensibility, generality, and performance.

Preface Goals The PVR System C++ and Python Python bindings Rendering with PVR I Fundamentals The Basics Time and motion blur Cameras Geometry Geometry attributes pvr::Geo::AttrTable pvr::Geo::AttrRef pvr::Geo::Attr and pvr::Geo::AttrVisitor Voxel Buffers Introduction to voxel buffersImplementing a simple voxel buffer Field3DTransformations and mappingsInterpolating voxel dataFiltered lookups Noise Procedural textures Perlin noise Noise functionsFractal functions The fractal base class Fractional Brownian motion (fBm) II Volume Modeling Fundamentals of Volume Modeling Volume modeling and voxel buffers Defining the voxel bufferVolume modeling strategiesRasterization primitivesInstantiation primitives Using geometry to guide volumetric primitivesCommon coordinate systemsProcedural noise and fractal functions PVR’s Modeling Pipeline Overview pvr::Model::Modelerpvr::Model::ModelerInput pvr::Util::ParamBasepvr::Model::Prim::Primitive Splatting data to voxel buffers Rasterization Primitives in PVR The RasterizationPrim base classImplementing primitivesSphere-based primitives The Point primitiveThe PyroclasticPoint primitiveLine-based primitivesThe Line primitive The PyroclasticLine primitive Instantiation Primitives in PVRThe InstantiationPrim base class Common strategies The Sphere instantiation primitive The Line instantiation primitive The Surface instantiation primitive III Volume Rendering Volumetric Lighting Lighting fundamentals Absorption Emission Scattering Phase functions Optical thickness and transmittance Wavelength dependency Other approaches to volume rendering Raymarching An introduction to raymarching Lighting and raymarching Integration intervals Integration intervals for multiple volumes Integration intervals for overlapping volumes Sampling strategies Empty space optimization Holdouts PVR’s Rendering Pipeline pvr::Render::Scene pvr::Render::Rendererpvr::Render::Camera pvr::Render::PerspectiveCamera pvr::Render::SphericalCamera pvr::Render::Image PVR Volume TypesVolumes in PVRpvr::Render::ConstantVolume pvr::Render::VoxelVolumepvr::Render::CompositeVolume Raymarching in PVR Introduction pvr::Render::Raymarcher pvr::Render::UniformRaymarcher Integration bounds Lighting in PVR Raymarch samplers pvr::Render::DensitySampler pvr::Render::PhysicalSampler pvr::Render::Light pvr::Render::PointLight pvr::Render::SpotLight Phase functions in PVR Occlusion in PVR Pre-Computed Occlusion Voxelized occlusion Deep shadows Strategies for pre-computation pvr::Render::VoxelOccluder pvr::Render::OtfVoxelOccluder pvr::Render::DeepImage pvr::Render::TransmittanceMapOccluder pvr::Render::OtfTransmittanceMapOccluder Bibliography

Magnus Wrenninge is a senior technical director and R&D programmer at Sony Pictures Imageworks. He is one of the developers of Field3D, an open source library for storing voxel data.