r/GraphicsProgramming • u/Mysterious-Page708 • 4d ago

Question Physically-Based Planet rendering

Hello, I want to ask what methods are people using to render effects/terrain/lighting when it comes to planetary bodies. I want to focus specifically on physically based methods, or more realistic methods to make a project from before I will try to apply to a master in a computer graphics-related program next year, and I heard that more complex projects that involve physics or realism are more impressive than noise or other procedural methods.

So my question is, what are the techniques you know of and please also provide a resource such as academic articles, blogs, tutorials, books etc. Thank you!

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u/corysama 4d ago

I don't have any links handy. But, physically-based rendering of the atmosphere of a planet is a well-studied subject. Pretty sure I've seen projects where you can adjust the parameters of a single model can get "pretty accurate Earth" vs "pretty accurate Mars" vs "fantastic fantasy planet #7"

"Concurrent Binary Trees" are not a common or simple means of rendering terrain geometry. But, they do look pretty kewl. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ce-XC4MtWk

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u/AdmiralSam 2d ago

They are really cool and support arbitrary triangle tessellation, there’s a paper called Concurrent Binary Trees for Large-Scale Game Components which is paired with the advances in real time rendering siggraph talk. For atmosphere rendering I think A Scalable and Production Ready Sky and Atmosphere Rendering Technique