Radiative Transfer in Reflection Nebulae | Edvald Ingi Gislason
| | Abstract | Being able to perform large-scale simulations on complex models is among the most important things in many fi elds of science, ranging from fi nance to astrophysics. Such simulations are of particular interest to astrophysicists as the majority of their studies resides in outer space, far from our reaches. Due to the remoteness of these objects, they can only be observed through data coming from instruments, like images produced by telescopes. Despite this, most of the physics and mathematical theory describing the origin and the composition of these objects are in fact, very mature, after decades of research.
One type of these distant interstellar objects are called reflection nebulae. They are dense regions of dust in space which reflect light coming from stars within them. With development of new algorithms and hardware, improvements can be made on existing methods for added complexity in lower computation times.
In this thesis, I present a method for simulating radiative transfer in reflection nebulae using volume photon mapping in CUDA and turning the photon map into a light field by convolving it with a filter using 3D FFT on the GPU. The light fi eld is then used with my implementation of a GPU-based ray marching algorithm to give real-time visualizations of the radiative transfer in reflection nebulae. | | Type | Master's thesis [Academic thesis] | | Year | 2010 | | Publisher | Technical University of Denmark, DTU Informatics, E-mail: reception@imm.dtu.dk | | Address | Asmussens Alle, Building 305, DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark | | Series | IMM-M.Sc.-2010 | | Note | Supervised by Assistant Professor Jeppe R. Frisvad, jrf@imm.dtu.dk, DTU Informatics | | Electronic version(s) | [pdf] | | Publication link | http://www.imm.dtu.dk/English.aspx | | BibTeX data | [bibtex] | | IMM Group(s) | Image Analysis & Computer Graphics |
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