Fast, Believable Real-time Rendering of Burning Low-Polygon Objects in Video Games

We present a framework for modeling the deformation and consumption of low-polygon models under combustion while generating procedural fire. Many recent publications have shown variety of deformation techniques involved in computer graphics using the GPU. However, deformation of low-polygon models, (which are prevalent in video games) is quite challenging since it is hard to maintain realism. We present a method for emulating the consumption and deformation of low-polygon models using real-time mesh refinement. Our focus is on trading realism for computation speed so that processing power is available for other tasks, such as might arise in the current generation of video game. We have implemented and tested our method on a relatively modest GPU using CUDA. Our experiments suggest that our method gives a believable rendering of the effects of fire while using only a small fraction of CPU and GPU resources. Our method also allows for quick and easy LOD (level-ofdetail) rendering of burning objects.