Generating Spark Discharge Sound for Interactive Animation using WM-wave

A technology for automatically creating and adding sound to interactive CG animations of spark discharges in an efficient way has been developed. In the procedure proposed in this paper, the user inputs the electric charge distribution, boundary conditions and other parameters affecting the initiation of electric discharges in virtual space. The animation of the discharge is then created by generating and rendering the profile of the discharge pattern. The sound synchronized with the animation is automatically generated in an efficient way. The noises generated by spark discharges are shock waves, which exhibit complicated behavior; however, in this study, an empirical profile for a shock wave is employed to efficiently generate the acoustic waveform. Effective procedures for expressing lightning discharges and continuous discharges are also proposed. In this paper, we present the details of our technique and demonstrate its effect and efficiency by giving many experimental examples. We investigated the parameters and waveforms employed in this study to demonstrate the validity of this procedure.