Real-Time Breaking Waves for Shallow Water Simulations

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.

Real-Time Breaking Waves for Shallow Water Simulations

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