Real-time Rendering and Animation of Plentiful Flames

Abstract

Rendering and animating flames in real time is a great challenge because of the complexity of the combustion process. While few models succeeded in simulating a single fire in real time, none tried to handle a large number of flames. In this paper we propose a set of techniques which aim at handling numerous flames like those of candles, torches or campfires in real time. We manage different levels of accuracy in the simulation, which is based on a fast fluid dynamics solver. We also consider many optimizations to reduce the rendering cost of a single flame. As a result, our approach is able to animate and render dozens of realistic flames in real-time, each one reacting independently to forces introduced at the scene level.