M.S. Sunar, S. Kari, and A. Bade (Malaysia)
Natural phenomena modelling, atmospheric rendering,computer graphics, real-time simulation, sky colour
Computer graphics has frequently been used to produce a simulation of the real world by synthesizing photo realistic image, especially for outdoors scenes, where displaying the sky as the background is indispensable. This paper will present the sky dome or hemispheric approach in developing a daylight sky simulator, which endeavours to model the colour of the sky for any location of the planet. A specific time of the day, the date and location of the viewer is needed to compute the position of the sun. The longitude and latitude is used to specify the viewer's position. A model of a dome is chosen as a representation of the sky. The basic mathematical formula for a sphere is used to model a robust data structure for the dome. The sky colour is computed using an analytic model of the sky. The calculated colour of the sky is mapped into the dome vertices; then the colour between each vertex is interpolated using smooth shading, which will give the approximate colour of the sky. The technique will speed up the rendering time. The result is suitable for rendering in a real-time application, which will contribute to the state-of-the-art for the climate models in environmental modelling.
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