filename     : p_PG07_Waves.pdf
entry        : inproceedings
conference   : Pacific Graphics 2007, Oct. 29 - Nov. 2, Maui, Hawaii, USA
pages        : 39-46
year         : 2007
month        : October
title        : Real-time Breaking Waves for Shallow Water Simulations
subtitle     :
author       : Nils Th\"{u}rey and Matthias M\"{u}ller-Fischer and Simon Schirm and Markus Gross
booktitle    : Proceedings of the Pacific Conference on Computer Graphics and Applications 2007
ISSN/ISBN    : 1550-4085 / 0-7695-3009-5
editor       : Marc ALexa, Steven Gortler, and Tao Ju
publisher    : IEEE Computer Society
publ.place   : Los ALamitos, California
volume       :
issue        :
language     : english
keywords     : Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism, Animation
abstract     : We present a new method for enhancing shallow water simulations by the effect of overturning waves. While full 3D fluid simulations can capture the process of wave breaking, this is beyond the capabilities of a pure height field model. 3D simulations, however, are still too expensive for real-time applications, especially when large bodies of water need to be simulated. The extension we propose overcomes this problem and makes it possible to simulate scenes such as waves near a beach, and surf riding characters in real-time. In a first step, steep wave fronts in the height field are detected and marked by line segments. These segments then spawn sheets of fluid represented by connected particles.  When the sheets impinge on the water surface, they are absorbed and result in the creation of particles representing drops and foam. To enable interesting applications, we furthermore present a two-way coupling of rigid bodies with the fluid simulation. The capabilities and efficiency of the method will be demonstrated with several scenes, which run in real-time on today¿s commodity hardware.