• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.29-39
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• 2017

This paper presents a unified framework to efficiently and realistically simulate surface and wave foams. The framework is designed to first project 3D water particles from an underlying water solver onto 2D screen space in order to reduce the computational complexity of determining where foam particles should be generated. Because foam effects are often created primarily in fast and complicated water flows, we analyze the acceleration and curvature values to identify the areas exhibiting such flow patterns. Foam particles are emitted from the identified areas in 3D space, and each foam particle is advected according to its type, which is classified on the basis of velocity, thereby capturing the essential characteristics of foam wave motions. We improve the realism of the resulting foam by classifying it into two types: surface foam and wave foam. Wave foam is characterized by the sharp wave patterns of torrential flow s, and surface foam is characterized by a cloudy foam shape even in water with reduced motion. Based on these features, we propose a technique to correct the velocity and position of a foam particle. In addition, we propose a kernel technique using the screen space density to efficiently reduce redundant foam particles, resulting in improved overall memory efficiency without loss of visual detail in terms of foam effects. Experiments convincingly demonstrate that the proposed approach is efficient and easy to use while delivering high-quality results.