Voyage Through
the Mist

Rendering Competition entry for the Computer Graphics Lecture of the UdS
from Tobias Wiedemann and Marek Röder.

February 4th, 2024

Final Scene

Final Render Image

Theme

A boat going towards the mountains and the unknown behind them. A nice mix between realism and mysterious overdrawn atmosphere.

Features

Shading Normals

Used on almost every model, especially noticeable on the trees

Alpha Masking

Used to:

Render snowflakes, by setting a plane with an alpha mask texture directly in front of the camera, you can see the snowflakes on the tree trunks
For the leaf material

Image Denoising

We expected image denoising to be hugely important, but in the end, it was not that important because of the high sample count of the final render.

Area Lights

Not used in the final render
Difficulty: Mistakenly set the interceptable parameter to true, resulting in entirely black images

Thinlens Camera

Used to focus the attention of the viewer
Difficulty: Initially tried to simulate rays from a pinhole to the lens and from there to the scene. This was unnecessarily complex. Solved by picking a random point on the lens and starting the simulation from there.

Homogeneous Participating Medium

Used to create some atmosphere through colorful fog which harmonizes with the background and the theme of sunrise

Difficulties:

One whole day. This ternary operator survived one whole day in the code while being reviewed by at least 4 people until it got flipped to finally
Flipped Ternary Operator Missing shadows or shadows in the wrong places.
Shadows Issue "Now it builds again"
Build Success

Third Party

Modular Wooden Pier
Island Tree 02
Dry Branches Medium 01
Coast Rocks 02
Fishing Ship
Seamless Water Textures
Snow and Ice Texture
Snowfall Illustration
Pink Sunrise
This Website Template

Scene name

Voyage Through the Mist

Participants

Tobias Wiedemann, Marek Röder