Animation and control of breaking waves

  • Authors:
  • Viorel Mihalef;Dimitris Metaxas;Mark Sussman

  • Affiliations:
  • Rutgers Univesity;Rutgers Univesity;Florida State University

  • Venue:
  • SCA '04 Proceedings of the 2004 ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics symposium on Computer animation
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Controlling fluids is still an open and challenging problem in fluid animation. In this paper we develop a novel fluid animation control approach and we present its application to controlling breaking waves. In our Slice Method framework an animator defines the shape of a breaking wave at a desired moment in its evolution based on a library of breaking waves. Our system computes then the subsequent dynamics with the aid of a 3D Navier-Stokes solver. The wave dynamics previous to the moment the animator exerts control can also be generated based on the wave library. The animator is thus enabled to obtain a full animation of a breaking wave while controlling the shape and the timing of the breaking. An additional advantage of the method is that it provides a significantly faster method for obtaining the full 3D breaking wave evolution compared to starting the simulation at an early stage and using solely the 3D Navier-Stokes equations. We present a series of 2D and 3D breaking wave animations to demonstrate the power of the method.