Realistic and fast cloud rendering in computer games

Clouds are an important aspect of many computer games, particularly flight simulators. Our system extends texture splatting on particles to model a dozen cloud types (e.g. stratus, cumulus congestus, cumulonimbus), an improvement over previous systems which modeled only one type of cumulus. We also achieve a 100x speedup for scenes with dense cloud coverage. We created a new shading model which uses artist-driven controls to approximate lighting. We also introduce a way to do cloud formation and dissipation with texture splatted particles.