| dc.description.abstract | Over the last decade, the special effects industry has embraced physics simulations as a highly useful addition to its tool-set for creating realistic scenes ranging from a small camp fire to the large scale destruction of whole cities. The simulation methods used to create these effects are largely based on techniques originally developed to replace scientific experiments with computer simulations. In a direct application of this paradigm to movie making, we can now replace a real effects set, such as the staging an exploding house, with the simulated explosion of a virtual model of the house. This has some obvious advantages: it is more cost-effective, enables a wider variety of effects and of course it is far less dangerous for the people involved. However, the desire to fine-tune and control effects in general is arguably the primary reason why movie makers prefer the use of virtual tools over their traditional counterparts. Unfortunately, controlling the details of a violent phenomenon such as an explosion remains problematic even using numerical simulations. Due to the chaotic nature of turbulent fluids, such simulations tend be both computationally expensive and unpredictable. Small changes in initial conditions or a change of resolution will produce unexpected changes in the final motion, and make it hard for animators to obtain the desired behavior for the effect. For this reason, the following course notes will focus on tools for augmenting existing coarse simulations with turbulent detail. This enables rich detail and visually interesting small-scale motion, but also allows for a practical multi stage work flow that gives artists control over large scale motion and small scale details separately. | en_US |
