Wavelet turbulence for fluid simulation

  • Authors:
  • Theodore Kim;Nils Thürey;Doug James;Markus Gross

  • Affiliations:
  • Cornell University;ETH Zurich;Cornell University;ETH Zurich

  • Venue:
  • ACM SIGGRAPH 2008 papers
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

We present a novel wavelet method for the simulation of fluids at high spatial resolution. The algorithm enables large- and small-scale detail to be edited separately, allowing high-resolution detail to be added as a post-processing step. Instead of solving the Navier-Stokes equations over a highly refined mesh, we use the wavelet decomposition of a low-resolution simulation to determine the location and energy characteristics of missing high-frequency components. We then synthesize these missing components using a novel incompressible turbulence function, and provide a method to maintain the temporal coherence of the resulting structures. There is no linear system to solve, so the method parallelizes trivially and requires only a few auxiliary arrays. The method guarantees that the new frequencies will not interfere with existing frequencies, allowing animators to set up a low resolution simulation quickly and later add details without changing the overall fluid motion.