19 August 2018

Water Simulation Captures Small Details

When designers select a method for simulating water and waves, they have to choose either fast computation or realistic effects; state-of-the-art methods are only able to optimize one or the other. Now, a method developed by researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) and NVIDIA bridges this gap. Their simulation method can reproduce complex interactions with the environment and tiny details over huge areas in real time. Moreover, the basic construction of the method allows graphics designers to easily create artistic effects.


Current water wave simulations are based on one of two available methods. Fourier-based methods are efficient but cannot model complicated interactions, such as water hitting shore of an island. Numerical methods, on the other hand, can simulate a wide range of such effects, but are much more expensive computationally. Achieving all of this required ingenuity, as well as a deep understanding of the basic physics involved. We encoded the waves with different physical parameters than people previously used.

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