Physically-Based Animation of Fire for Android

Abstract

Animation of fire and fluids has been around for at least 20 years in the field of computer graphics. These animations have over the years progressed into real-time simulations running on the GPU and further refined, thanks to modifications such as vorticity and wavelet turbulence, adding higher visual detail. With the improving performance and capability of mobile phones, our issue was how well an animation of fire can be achieved and under which limitations, when developed for a modern mobile device. For our application, we used Java, C++ and GLSL. The simulation was built upon three layers: simulation overview, simulation operations and slab operation. In order to simulate the behavior of a fluid, we chose to use and compare the Euler equation and the Navier-Stokes equations. To optimize the performance of the fire while still maintaining a high level of detail, we used wavelet turbulence. The application was able to achieve our initial goal of reaching 30 frames per second with relatively good resulting flame on a modern mobile device. However, older devices might not be able to achieve this performance at all.