1. Senior Project - Computer Science – 2008 Non-Photorealistic Fire
Mike Donovan
Advisor – Prof. Burns
Abstract
Non-photorealistic graphics are becoming more and more popular in computer and video games today. Gamers look for an escape from reality in games and a non-photorealistic environment makes that easier. Fire has always lagged behind other graphical effects like water due to the fact that there is no simple mathematical model for it. Also the current solutions to the fire problem do not map well to non-photorealistic environments so the realistic version is used. The goal of this project is to create a convincing, non-photorealistic fire that meshes with the rest of the world around it.
Implementation
Created a Beziér Spline with moveable control points.
Automated movement of control points.
Generated the points on the spline using the equation:
Created a lattice around the spline for volume.
Textured the spline.
Added physics, ie. fuel and wind
Made the lattice bend with the slope of the spline.
Conclusions
Creating non-photorealistic fire can be done by taking advantage of transparency and blending in OpenGL. Having multiple flames overlap provides this blending giving the fire a “cartoonish” look and feel. On modern graphics hardware the slowdown is minimal as the real work is simply using texture coordinates to index into the flame texture. This allows for good scalability to the size of fires as only one instance of the texture must be kept on the graphics card at any time.