Making Procedural Water Waves Boundary-Aware

Publication

Computer Graphics Forum (SCA ‘20)

Abstract

The “procedural” approach to animating ocean waves is the dominant algorithm for animating larger bodies of water in interactive applications as well as in off-line productions — it provides high visual quality with a low computational demand. In this paper, we widen the applicability of procedural water wave animation with an extension that guarantees the satisfaction of boundary conditions imposed by terrain while still approximating physical wave behavior. In combination with a particle system that models wave breaking, foam, and spray, this allows us to naturally model waves interacting with beaches and rocks. Our system is able to animate waves at large scales at interactive frame rates on a commodity PC.

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Supplementary Video

3-Minute Video Abstract

15-Minute Conference Presentation

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers and the members of the Visual Computing Group at IST Austria for their valuable feedback. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 638176 and No. 715767.