Real-time volumetric explosion special effects for games

Rašeta, Marta (author), Lesar, Žiga (author), Bohak, Ciril (author)

Video game special effects are usually created using sprites or simplistic triangle meshes with added textures, which is a good compromise between performance and quality. This paper presents an implementation of a real-time volumetric explosion effect that aims to enhance realism in video games while seamlessly integrating the volume into a 3D scene, allowing it to interact with the environment. The effect is rendered in a web environment using JavaScript and WebGPU. Our implementation uses ray marching for volume rendering, integrating a transfer function for color mapping, noise functions for adding natural variation, and bloom post-processing to enhance fire illumination. The contribution of this paper is to demonstrate the rendering possibilities and growing support of volumetric special effects for more interactive and immersive web applications and video games.

• Language: English
• Keywords: real-time rendering, volumetric effects, WebGPU, ray marching, game development
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.08 - Published Scientific Conference Contribution
• Organization: FRI - Faculty of Computer and Information Science
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 323-333
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-171131
• UDC: 004.92
• ISSN on article: 2464-4617
• COBISS.SI-ID: 244517635
• Publication date in RUL: 07.08.2025

Record is a part of a proceedings

• Title: WSCG 2025
• COBISS.SI-ID: 244517123

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Computer science research notes : CSRN
• Shortened title: Comp. Sci. Res. Notes
• Publisher: Václav Skala - Union Agency
• ISSN: 2464-4617
• COBISS.SI-ID: 159739139

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: realnočasovno upodabljanje, volumetrični efekti, WebGPU, korakanje vzdolž žarka