A Lightning Plug-in for the Foundry’s Nuke Compositor

The goal of this thesis is to create a physically based lightning simulator for use within the VFX industry. The thesis studies the physics of real lightning creation and explores existing methods for its simulation, both visual and physically based. We use the Dielectric Breakdown Model as our physically based method of choice and offer four variations of a conjugate gradient solver used within to solve systems of linear equations in order to calculate electric potential. Further, we also discuss the rendering of electrical bolts and scene illumination induced thereby. We implement our Perun lightning generator as both a standalone application and a plug-in for The Foundry's Nuke compositor. Finally, we demonstrate the use of the implemented plug-in to composite lightning into several shots and offer an insight to the process of doing so.