Accelerating and enhancing rendering of realistic ocean scenes

Modeling and rendering realistic ocean scenes has been investigated by many researchers in the past few years, providing different models of ocean waves, fine-scale details, and light-water interactions. This paper describes a practical data structure for accelerating ray-marching for a well-known wave model defined as a sum of trochoids waves. This data structure exhibits nice properties that allow to take into account spatial and temporal coherence as well as reducing aliasing effects. In addition to this, it offers a unified framework in which fine-scale details, such as scattering phenomena due to spray, foam or particles suspended in the water, can be added easily. Finally, we present some benefits of the model, which can handle physically-based light-water interactions and glare effects.