Final Project

Group Members: Curtis Andrus

Goal

The goal of my project is to realistically simulate how light interacts with a slice of watermelon. This will involve both modelling the internal structure of a watermelon, as well as light interacting with the watermelon. The surface of a watermelon slice (the red part, not the outside) seems to have specular component while being translucent at the same time, and I think it would be interesting to attempt to simulate this effect.

Images

Basic Approach and Potential Challenges

The easiest part of the project will be the creation of the watermelon shape, as a sphere is a good approximation to a whole watermelon. Slices of a watermelon can be done with restricting a sphere to a certain range of angles.

There are two major challenges I see in this project. The first challenge is modelling the internal watermelon structure. Ideally I would like to come up with a method for doing this that is similar to real-life watermelons, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that. If I can't, then I will attempt to create a reasonable approximation, probably using some form of noise function. Either way, I'm imagining the structure of the watermelon as a solid texture.

The next challenge is simulation of light transport. I plan to do this by implementing some form of volumetric photon mapping. At the moment I'm not entirely sure how I'd go about doing this, so I will need to do more research. I will need to read the papers mentioned under "Advanced volume rendering" in the description of the final project.

I'm not sure how much time it will take to simulate the watermelons, but hopefully I will have time to simulate the transition from the inner red part of the watermelon to the green outer skin. Adding seeds would also be cool. Modelling the shape of a seed wouldn't be difficult, but making it look like it fit in the watermelon could be tough. As seen in the pictures, there seems to be small holes in the watermelon's structure where the seeds are.