Research: clouds rendering etc.

Ph.D thesis	⇑
My Ph.D thesis subject was the Realistic rendering of clouds in realtime. Follow the link to get the manuscript, slides, and research data. It was done at EVASION, under the supervision of Fabrice Neyret. This work follows my Master's thesis (history). This Ph.D thesis has also partly been done with Nelson Max (UC Davis).
Research themes	⇑
My research led to two main works on clouds rendering, plus various on-the-side stuff:
Stratiform clouds rendering	⇑
I started with a work on stratiform clouds rendering, published at the Eurographics Workshop on Natural Phenomena. This method is very fast and can advantageously replace the traditional skybox to provide a game with an animated, dynamic, realistic, high-dynamic range sky including clouds: Real-time realistic illumination and shading of stratiform clouds Antoine Bouthors, Fabrice Neyret, Sylvain Lefebvre Eurographics Workshop on Natural Phenomena - sep 2006
General clouds rendering	⇑
My subsequent work considered rendering all types of clouds, in all lighting situations, from any point of view (including views from inside the clouds), in real-time, with the ability to animate the clouds shape. This (kinda difficult) task has finally been achieved and our method is described in our real-time clouds rendering paper, which I will present at the ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (I3D). This technique is primarily targeted at applications such flight simulators and games where clouds are a very important visual part. The goal is to provide more realism and detail than previous methods while keeping real-time frame rates and allowing animation. Interactive multiple anisotropic scattering in clouds Antoine Bouthors, Fabrice Neyret, Nelson Max, Eric Bruneton, Cyril Crassin ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (I3D) - 2008 Rendu interactif de nuages réalistes Antoine Bouthors, Fabrice Neyret, Nelson Max, Eric Bruneton, Cyril Crassin Journées de l'Association Francophone d'Informatique Graphique (AFIG) - nov 2007
Subsurface scattering	⇑
Subsurface scattering is just a particular case of multiple scattering. Since I did a lot of work on multiple scattering for my clouds rendering research, I also gave a try on real-time subsurface scattering. Real-time subsurface scattering on the GPU Antoine Bouthors, Eric Bruneton, Fabrice Neyret, Nelson Max Technical Report , INRIA - 2007
Clouds shape modeling	⇑
My Master's work led to a short paper at Eurographics on clouds shape modeling. We based ourselves on this work and on Fabrice's research to model the shape of the clouds used in the forementioned rendering papers. See the subject. Modeling Clouds Shape Antoine Bouthors, Fabrice Neyret Eurographics (short papers) - august 2004 I also have co-authored a paper on the modeling of clouds through sketching with Jamie Wither and Marie-Paule Cani at the end of my thesis: Rapid sketch modeling of clouds Jamie Wither, Antoine Bouthors, Marie-Paule Cani Eurographics Workshop on Sketch-Based Interfaces and Modeling (SBM) - 2008
Implicit surface triangulation	⇑
My work on clouds shape modeling led me to do some research on implicit surfaces. It resulted in a paper on dynamic triangulation of implicit surfaces with Matthieu Nesme published at Graphics Interface, a research report on topology changes and an internship with Damien Rumiano and Franck Hétroy also on topology changes. Twinned Meshes for Dynamic Triangulation of Implicit Surfaces Antoine Bouthors, Matthieu Nesme Graphics Interface - may 2007
Students	⇑
I supervised three great students during my Ph.D.:
Guillaume Piolat	⇑
Guillaume coded a great part of the demo for our clouds rendering paper. Internship subject No report for this internship, but take a look at the publication: Interactive multiple anisotropic scattering in clouds Antoine Bouthors, Fabrice Neyret, Nelson Max, Eric Bruneton, Cyril Crassin ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (I3D) - 2008 Rendu interactif de nuages réalistes Antoine Bouthors, Fabrice Neyret, Nelson Max, Eric Bruneton, Cyril Crassin Journées de l'Association Francophone d'Informatique Graphique (AFIG) - nov 2007
Damien Rumiano	⇑
Damien worked on implicit surfaces, following our first trials on topology changes. He got some really nice results which we are currently trying to wrap up in some research paper. Internship subject Report Topological modifications of animated surfaces Damien Rumiano, Antoine Bouthors, Matthieu Nesme, Franck Hetroy Unpublished - August 2007
Benoit Laurent	⇑
Benoit worked on implicit surfaces triangulation. His work led us to investigate the new triangulation technique we finally published at GI. Internship subject Report Triangulation de surfaces implicites dynamiques Benoit Laurent, Antoine Bouthors, Fabrice Neyret Master thesis from ESIEE Paris - sep 2005
Collaborations	⇑
Some of the great people I got to work with: Fabrice Neyret, my supervisor. Nelson Max, one of the pioneers in computer graphics. I spent a few months at UC Davis working with him on clouds rendering. Matthieu Nesme, fellow PhD student, climbing partner and great friend. He does strange stuff with livers. Sylvain Lefebvre, now researcher at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis. Whatever you think you could do with textures and GPU, he already did it. Eric Bruneton, a crazy guy doing all sorts of landscape rendering. Franck Hétroy, the local computational geometry expert. Cyril Crassin, another PhD student doing amazing things with GPUs. Gabriel Peyré, good friend and genius now researcher at Paris Dauphine. We learned computer graphics together by coding a 3D engine on our own.
CG clouds pictures	⇑
Mine are here. There are also old ones, done during my master's. Others' (at Fabrice's)
Real clouds pictures and videos	⇑
My pictures and videos Videos taken in Montbonnot (free !) blue sky tape videos (© blue sky, restricted access) At Fabrice's (1) At Fabrice's (2) Weather Stock Photography Weather Pictures and Storm Chasing
Reports, notes, etc. (restricted access)	⇑
7 feb. 2005 report + post-report meeting resume Analytic exercices Synthesis of an analytic method for a cloud layer Cloud properties