Meshes on Fire

We present a new method for the animation of fire on polyhedral surfaces. Using the notion of discrete straightest geodesics, we evolve fire fronts directly on the surface of arbitrarily complex objects. Animator control and motion complexity is achieved by driving the fire motion using multi-scale turbulent wind fields and geometric quantities. Our model also supports adaptivity of the fire fronts, multiple simultaneous fires, and merging of multiple fires. This new technique produces convincing simulations at interactive rates even on a low-end PC, greatly increasing the productivity of the animation design process.