Vortex Methods for Smoke Simulation

Rolling vortices and chaotic swirling are the most visually compelling aspect of smoke. Standard numerical simulation techniques for the animation of smoke suffer from a loss of these vortex patterns due to numerical damping. The majority of methods in computer animation use techniques such as vorticity confinement [3] to re-capture them. In this work, a Lagrangian method is presented which explicitly conserves vorticity, maintaining the visually pleasing fluid rolling and swirling throughout the simulation.