The Abalone Interpolation: A Visual Interpolation Procedure for the Calculation of Cloud Movement

For the production of smooth animation of flow simulation out of only several data steps many interpolated intermediate data steps are needed. Especially for the meteorological visualization of moving clouds for TV broadcasting purposes such interpolations are of high importance. The traditional method for the animation production is to fade one dataset out and to fade the next dataset in. The visual result is not very realistic if the clouds should move quickly and the distances between them are too great, because blending produces no clouds movements. In this paper we present the Abalone Interpolation for the calculation of visually realistic cloud movements. The presented solution is not only suitable for meteorological visualization but also for visual preparation of the flow calculation results.