Realistic real-time rendering for ocean waves on GPU

Abstract

Creating and rendering realistic ocean is one of the most daunting tasks in computer graphics. An efficient algorithm is used to render ocean waves by taking advantage of the parallelism and programmability of GPU and the new characteristics of vertex sampling of Shader Model 3.0. The ocean modeling is optimized by level-of-detail (LOD) technology. The real-time wave simulation is realized by the technology of animated texture associated with time, which storages 250 pictures of the height map of ocean surface and is used to superimpose the grid vertex. The illumination effects of the water, such as the reflection, refraction and Fresnel effects, are rendered. Experimental results are shown very well to meet the photorealism and real-time requirement (>60fps) and can be applied to generate real-time water in visual reality.