Realism of scenes involving water surfaces during rendering

A system comprising:

• a processor that is configured to:
• compute a lighting mesh for a scene to be rendered;
• project light rays from one or more polygons of a water surface mesh onto geometry of the scene, based on a relationship between the water surface mesh and the lighting mesh;
• and
• perform lighting of the geometry of the scene, utilizing the projected light rays.

A method comprising:

• determining a water surface mesh for a scene to be rendered;
• for each vertex of the water surface mesh, determining a refracted ray;
• computing a refracted water mesh for the scene, utilizing the refracted rays for each vertex of the water surface mesh;
• computing a compression ratio for each polygon of the water surface mesh;
• projecting refracted light rays from one or more polygons of the water surface mesh onto underwater scene geometry, based on the compression ratio computed for each polygon of the water surface mesh;
• and
• performing lighting of the underwater scene geometry, utilizing the projected refracted light rays.