“Modeling the motion of a hot, turbulent gas” by Foster and Metaxas

This paper describes a new animation technique for modeling the turbulent rotational motion that occurs when a hot gas interacts with solid objects and the surrounding medium. The method is especially useful for scenes involving swirling steam, rolling or billowing smoke, and gusting wind. It can also model gas motion due to fans and heat convection. The method combines specialized forms of the equations of motion of a hot gas with an efficient method for solving volumetric differential equations at low resolutions. Particular emphasis is given to issues of computational efficiency and ease-of-use of the method by an animator. We present the details of our model, together with examples illustrating its use.

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