This dissertation describes the wave particles technique for simulating water surface waves and two way fluid-object interactions for real-time applications, such as video games. Water exists in various different forms in our environment and it is important to develop necessary technologies to be able to incorporate all these forms in real-time virtual environments. Handling the behavior of large bodies of water, such as an ocean, lake, or pool, has been computationally expensive with traditional techniques even for offline graphics applications, because of the high resolution requirements of these simulations. A significant portion of water behavior for large bodies of water is the surface wave phenomenon. This dissertation discusses how water surface waves can be simulated efficiently and effectively at real-time frame rates using a simple particle system that we call "wave particles." This approach offers a simple, fast, and unconditionally stable solution to wave simulation. Unlike traditional techniques that try to simulate the water body (or its surface) as a whole with numerical techniques, wave particles merely track the deviations of the surface due to waves forming an analytical solution. This allows simulation of seemingly infinite water surfaces, like an open ocean. Both the theory and implementation of wave particles are discussed in great detail. Two-way interactions of floating objects with water is explained, including generation of waves due to object interaction and proper simulation of the effect of water on the object motion. Timing studies show that the method is scalable, allowing simulation of wave interaction with several hundreds of objects at real-time rates.

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When working with oceans in the visual effects industry, it is not always very practical or even possible to use real live footage, especially if extreme weather conditions are required. A common scenario is computer generated objects crashing into an ocean generating splashes and foam that should stick to and integrate well with the real ocean surface. Making a shot like that look realistic is very difficult, this is where a fully computer generated ocean surface comes in handy. Creating high resolution computer generated sequences of an ocean surface with interacting objects is difficult using today’s available commercial 3D packages. I have therefore implemented a VFX ocean toolkit, which is a system built for generating the ocean surface, Kelvin wakes and interaction with objects. The ocean toolkit was built with the artist in mind and the need for real time preview to produce results quick and easy in order for the system to remain cost effective. The ocean toolkit is tightly integrated directly into the procedural 3D animation package Houdini1 as several plug-ins and shaders that can be combined to create numerous ocean surface effects.