Theodore Kim's seminal paper has been awarded a Tech Oscar by the AMPAS.
Abstract: We present a novel wavelet method for the simulation of fluids at high spatial resolution.
The algorithm enables large- and small-scale detail to be edited separately, allowing high-resolution detail to be added as a post-processing step. Instead of solving the Navier-Stokes equations over a highly refined mesh, we use the wavelet decomposition of a low-resolution simulation to determine the location and energy characteristics of missing high-frequency components.
We then synthesize these missing components using a novel incompressible turbulence function, and provide a method to maintain the temporal coherence of the resulting structures.
There is no linear system to solve, so the method parallelizes trivially and requires only a few auxiliary arrays.
The method guarantees that the new frequencies will not interfere with existing frequencies, allowing animators to set up a low resolution simulation quickly and later add details without changing the overall fluid motion.
