Animating real‐time explosions

2006

We present a method for real-time simulation of 3dimensional fire inspired by an old mechanical trick known as the "silk torch". Motivated by the proven illusive effect of silk torch, we model the kinematics of a flames by a mass-spring system, and its turbulant visual dynamics by texture sequencing with variable speeds and transparencies that depend on the speed of the vaporized fuel. The approach allows for incorporating external forces such as the gravity, and the wind force for added realism. Also, a specific characteristic of our method is that any object inserted in a flame can be modeled simply as an external force in the mass-spring system, making real-time interactions with fire a simple addition to the overall system. While the approach maintains an extremely low computational cost, these flexibilities increase the realism of our 3D fire by allowing for real-time control and the interactivity, which is a highly desirable requirement in applications such as augmented reality.

2003

In this article, we give a brief overview of methods that are currently used to simulate and animate fire and other natural phenomena for the special effects industry. First, we discuss the use of the ghost fluid method to treat thin flame fronts. Then, we illustrate the use of this method to model and animate fire for computer graphics purposes. Next, we discuss the use of the one phase, twodimensional Euler equations to model highly detailed large scale phenomena such as the nuclear explosions seen in the movie "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines". We also briefly touch upon the use of more traditional (in a computer graphics sense) particle-based techniques for modeling flames and explosions. Finally, we close the article with the particle level set method and its application to the animation and rendering of complex water surfaces.

ACM Transactions on Graphics, 2002

We present a physically based method for modeling and animating fire. Our method is suitable for both smooth (laminar) and turbulent flames, and it can be used to animate the burning of either solid or gas fuels. We use the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations to independently model both vaporized fuel and hot gaseous products. We develop a physically based model for the expansion that takes place when a vaporized fuel reacts to form hot gaseous products, and a related model for the similar expansion that takes place when a solid fuel is vaporized into a gaseous state. The hot gaseous products, smoke and soot rise under the influence of buoyancy and are rendered using a blackbody radiation model. We also model and render the blue core that results from radicals in the chemical reaction zone where fuel is converted into products. Our method allows the fire and smoke to interact with objects, and flammable objects can catch on fire.

Proceedings of the 2007 symposium on Interactive 3D graphics and games - I3D '07, 2007

Figure 1: Procedural noise generation is used to animate the micro details of the fire to make every frame look unique.

2017

In the late 1970’s Fickett and Majda introduced qualitative models for supersonic combustion, in an attempt to produce simple equations describing reactive shocks [1, 2]. The rationale was to strip the compressible reactive Euler/Navier-Stokes equations of their non-essential difficulties, in order to gain a deeper mathematical (as well as physical) understanding of the dynamics of shock waves propagating in a reactive medium. Not surprisingly, both Fickett and Majda chose as the starting point Burgers’ equation (already known to represent the generic behavior of weakly non-linear hyperbolic waves), and modified it in order to account for the energy released by a chemical reaction. A few years later, Rosales and Majda [3] showed that the Burgers-like “toy” models invented in the late 1970’s were closely related to a rational asymptotic approximation, starting from the full reactive Navier-Stokes equations, of weak heat release gaseous detonations. The weak heat release limit was als...

The Visual Computer, 2009

Simulating the destruction of objects due to collisions has many applications in computer graphics. Previous methods on the destruction of objects perform physically-based simulation of the fracture of objects into relatively large size fragments. However, if we observe the process of the destruction of objects, we can see that dust and fine debris are also generated. In particular, previous methods do not take into account the dust generation. In this paper, we present a unified framework for simulating destruction and the generated dust and various sizes of debris. Our method simulates destruction on three different scales: coarse fracture, fine debris and dust. We compute the distribution and the amount of fine debris and dust based on the fracture energy which is the energy that causes the object to be fractured. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, in terms of the generated effects and the simulation speed, by showing the simulation results of destruction caused by the collision between objects.

Proceedings of Graphics …, 2006

This paper proposes an improved billboard rendering method that splats particles as aligned quadrilaterals similarly to previous techniques, but takes into account the spherical geometry of the particles during fragment processing. The new method can eliminate billboard clipping and popping artifacts of previous techniques, happening when the participating medium contains objects, or the camera flies into the volume. This paper also discusses how to use spherical billboards to render high detail explosions made of fire and smoke at high frame rates.

33rd Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit, 1995

We introduce a method for the animation of fire propagation and the burning consumption of objects represented as volumetric data sets. Our method uses a volumetric fire propagation model based on an enhanced distance field. It can simulate the spreading of multiple fire fronts over a specified isosurface without actually having to create that isosurface. The distance field is generated from a specific shell volume that rapidly creates narrow spatial bands around the virtual surface of any given isovalue. The complete distance field is then obtained by propagation from the initial bands. At each step multiple fire fronts can evolve simultaneously on the volumetric object. The flames of the fire are constructed from streams of particles whose movement is regulated by a velocity field generated with the hardware-accelerated Lattice Boltzmann Model (LBM). The LBM provides a physically-based simulation of the air flow around the burning object. The object voxels and the splats associated with the flame particles are rendered in the same pipeline so that the volume data with its external and internal structures can be displayed along with the fire.

Protection of US Army vehicles and personnel against landmine and IED threats is an increasingly important concern in the area of defense research. In this paper we describe the development of a Blast Computational Framework (BCF) that will provide an advanced modeling environment and a suite of tools for performing soil bound explosion simulations and their effects on vehicles and on the human occupants of the vehicles. The BCF will provide a virtual test-bed where disparate computational models can seamlessly interact with one another to provide a unified modeling solution for blast-vehicle-occupant scenarios. The BCF is being developed using state-of-the-art component-based software architecture and will provide a suite of integrated models consisting of both new and existing simulation tools. The enhanced simulation capabilities provided by the BCF will serve to better protect the crews of existing vehicles and to help design next-generation vehicles as well.