Chemical kinetics-assisted, path-based smoke simulation

Despite recent successes in physics-based fluid animation, generating desired fluid flow with intuitive control of its motion still remains a challenging problem in the special effects industry. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for path-based smoke simulation that explores the theory of chemical kinetics in an aim to provide a useful animation tool. By describing intended smoke effects through chemical reaction equations and adjusting their parameters, our method allows to easily create various interesting smoke effects that were often hard to get with previous techniques. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented animation framework, we describe several examples of path-based smoke animations, generated with easily understandable reaction equations and control parameters. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.