| Principal QN |
Angular QN |
Magnetic QN |
Cutaway: |
(cut plane position) | |
Perspective: |
(field of view) | |
Brightness: |
(color intensity) | |
Thickness: |
(cloud absorption) | |
Quality: |
(integration resolution) | |
Chemist: |
(only render real part, | standard in chemistry) |
The electron's wavefunction can be written as a complex-valued function of position. In spherical coordinates, it can be factored into a constant multiplied by an up-an-down part, a radial part and an around part. Obviously, it becomes rotationally symmetric around the vertical axis if the around-part is set aside. It also happens to be the case that the rotationally symmetric part is real-valued.
When an orbital is selected, the program bakes a slice of the rotationally symmetric part into a 2D image texture lookup table. The gradient of the magnitude of the function is written to the green and blue channels, to later be processed into a lighting normal. The output is distorted radially in order to keep the image frequency the right distance from the pixel sample rate.
In order to render the wavefunction in 3D, numerical integration is performed along rays starting at each fragment (pixel) and proceeding into the bulk of the function. Emissive contributions decay exponentially as a function of the absorptivity integrated up to that point, realistically depicting a translucent material with no internal scattering.