Neat, the concept is so elegantly obvious:
- your dataset is already an analytic representation of stretched spheres. Just assume that they are a hard shape of plasma with uniform density throughout the volume.
- for each pixel perform ray intersection against each spheroid, the thickness that the ray went through is precisely how much thickness the spheroid is contributing light to your pixel (obviously also multiplied by solid angle)
- since it’s light, there is no occlusion, so just stack the contribution from all the ellipsoids together and you’re done.
- since you are rendering a well-defined shape without self occlusion, there is no random popping in and out no matter the angle.
The computation is practically equivalent to rendering CSG shapes, except even easier since you only ever add and not occlude/subtract. It also scales with rat racing hardware directly.
- your dataset is already an analytic representation of stretched spheres. Just assume that they are a hard shape of plasma with uniform density throughout the volume.
- for each pixel perform ray intersection against each spheroid, the thickness that the ray went through is precisely how much thickness the spheroid is contributing light to your pixel (obviously also multiplied by solid angle)
- since it’s light, there is no occlusion, so just stack the contribution from all the ellipsoids together and you’re done.
- since you are rendering a well-defined shape without self occlusion, there is no random popping in and out no matter the angle.
The computation is practically equivalent to rendering CSG shapes, except even easier since you only ever add and not occlude/subtract. It also scales with rat racing hardware directly.