Realistic Real-Time Rendering of Fire in a Production System: Feasibility Study Thesis Proposal

The thesis presents an effort at developing a robust, interactive framework for rendering 3-D fire in real-time in a production environment. Many techniques of rendering fire in non real-time exist and are constantly employed by the movie industry. Many of the systems developed for rendering fire in offline mode directly influenced and inspired real-time fire rendering, including this thesis. Macro-level behavior of fire is characterized by wind fields, temperature and moving sources and is currently processed on CPU while micro-level behavior like turbulence, flickering, shape is created on graphics hardware. This framework must support two-way interaction with fire, i.e. not only fire is influenced by the environment but also the environment can receive input from fire via collision detection. It must provide a set of tools for level designers to wield complete artistic and behavioral control over fire as part of the scene. The resulting system must be able to scale well, to use as few processor cycles as possible, and efficiently integrate into an existing production environment. The focus in this work is on testing the feasibility of rendering fire volumetrically within the constraints of a real 3D engine production system. Performance statistics must be collected and the concepts presented in previous work on volumetric fire rendering must be tested and the feasibility of achieving interactive frame rates within a 3D engine framework must be assessed.