Modeling and Animating Gases with Simulation Features

Abstract

In modeling natural phenomena, artists often compromise the benefits of direct control for the visual realism of physics-based simulation. For gases, Eulerian simulations traditionally provide realistic results, but a poor representation for artistically shaping the media. In our system, users work with a more intuitive set of continuously extracted features whose manipulation feeds back into the original simulation. This novel approach overcomes common control issues by providing modeling tools to manipulate high-level behavior in Eulerian simulations. We employ techniques in feature extraction, real-time gas simulation, and volume rendering to build an interactive system to sculpt three-dimensional flows.