Update 24/03

Gannt Chart week commencing 23/03/09

Above is the gannt chart which has some of the new colours which show where I am at this time (guide to the left of this blog). At the moment I am falling behind with the coding due to having problems with it not producing the right results. All it was doing is pushing the densities horizontally. However today I have manage to solve this problem but I have got another one at the moment which is that the gird is fuzzy. Hopefully this shouldnt take me too long and with me putting in more hours into it I should have it completed by Friday. Another problem is the grid currently I can't get it to fill the entire screen which I am looking to solve within the next few days.

On the writing side at the moment I have made a start at the literature review which seems to be going ok. Should hopefully have this done for Sunday if everything goes well.

Draft Abstracts

Version 1

In this paper we present a simple and fast implementation of a stable fluid simulator which can be used within a games engine. Here the technique is used to represent a water based fluid but the technique can be used to for a number of realistic fluid-like effects like swirling smoke. The technique uses simplified Navier-Stokes questions which are hard to solve with strict physical accuracy being their main goal. Our technique on the other hand gears towards the visual side of the equation and where stability and speed are the prime importance to the equations. We also show that our technique is easy to code by providing the source code for our technique along with this paper. Our algorithms run in real-time for 2D grids on a standard PC hardware which includes Direct3D.

Version 2

Simulating accurate representations of fluids in a real-time environment can be tricky and sometimes impossible to be included within a game due to the complex structure and physical equations which are required to represent them accurately. However, within a game environment it is not really necessary to have physically accurate representations of fluid but have something that looks like it and that has some of its physical properties. In this paper we present a fast and stable technique for representing fluids in a real-time environment which is based on Navier-Stokes equations but have been adapted so that visual quality and speed are the prime importance. We also show that the technique can be easily coded by providing source code to a demo application along with this paper. Our algorithm runs in real-time for a 2D grid of a reasonable size on a Standard PC which has DirectX included with it.

Gannt Chart Update

Above is an update of the new project schedule which was altered due to the new deadlines for the dissertation and the date for the presentation. Also the Introduction write up has been put the end and every other section has been pushed forward.

16/03 Update

Well I have made a lot of progress over the last week with my demo application. Here I have managed to have the program run without any errors. The program now runs with an example of a grid on screen and takes in an input from the user.
After my meeting with Dr Lucas some questions have appear about of the forces are going to be applied in term of direction and magnitude which I haven't really thought about. The way round this was an idea of having to clicks to apply the force. This in turn would give a direction and magnitude for these two coordinates and would be simple to calculate.
We also talk about me doing my report and how it would be best to do the introduction at the end of the schedule rather than doing it this week. Therefore my Gantt chart will be alter to effect this change which will be up tomorrow along with a progress report after my meeting with Dr Özveren.

Gantt Chart

Progress Report

The honours project which I am currently carrying out involves a research into existing techniques for fluid simulations. These techniques are to be evaluated to determine if they can be used in a real-time environment with out tying up the CPU and also produce realistic visual results. A demo application of a technique will be produced to show a technique at work with the ability of user interaction included with it.

Work Done

Most of the work that has been done since the project began is research into the Jos Stam’s work especially into his techniques for stable fluids which is techniques required if the fluid is to be included in a game environment. Also research in to Navier-Stokes equations has been done to get a understanding how they are used and what each of the terms included in the equations mean. Once an understanding was developed then it was decided between me and my supervisor that it would be best to start building my application earlier because it will help me understand the functions of the Navier-Stokes equations more and also allow for more time if any problems occur. The class which contains all the functions of the Navier-Stokes equations has been created with some problems cropping up along the way. The main problem that occurred was the pointers used was not being evaluated correctly which took a couple of weeks to solve which is longer than I hoped but with me starting the application earlier and spending more time working on the application I believe I still have enough time to complete it.

Work in progress

Currently I’m working on creating the visual aspects of the fluid. I am trying to get a 2D grid which will show the changes of density within a fluid when a force is implied. This force will be applied by the use of a mouse click onto the grid which is something else that I am working on. The visual aspects are currently going to represent in DirectX.

Work still to be done

There is still work to be built into the application which will deal with stationary objects which I want to be included into the application. Another thing that needs to be achieved as well is the boundary calculations for the fluid. Currently at the moment it is set to a basic box but I plan on expanding it to have ‘free surfaces’ which is discussed by Nick Foster and Dimitri Metaxas. The application also has to be tested by looking at the performance of the application and the look of the fluid. Then once this application has been built the final report and presentation will be prepared and written up before the project completion date 22nd May.

05/03 Update

Well in this last two weeks I have been having a few problems with the application. The class that contains the Navier-Stokes equations was having errors about not being able to evaluate certain pointers when the application was being run. After a week on trying to fix it I have switched the pointers to arrays to represent the grid. Another problem came up with this but was due to putting the class as a pointer which was changed. Now the program runs without crashing but there is another problem and it is not representing the grid on screen. This I believe is to do with how im outputting the vertices on the screen.
So the goals to be achieved are:
Sort the problem with the output.
Get the mouse input included into the application.