Modeling and Rendering of Heterogeneous Granular Materials: Granite Application

Light-matter interactions is one of the most important factors of realistic rendering. While a lot of work has already been performed in the light transport and simulation area, we believe that “virtual materials” have not yet been studied enough to achieve a high degree of realism. Some good models exist in order to take into account homogeneous materials. However, there are only a few studies of heterogeneous granular materials. In this paper, we propose a method based on mimicking natural phenomena to take into account these materials. Our study focuses on granite, which can be considered as a heterogeneous agglomerate of individually homogeneous grains. First we present a nucleation/growth process inspired technique giving a full 3D model of granite. Then, we use a rendering process taking into account each material component and subsurface scattering in a simple way