Flows on surfaces of arbitrary topology

Abstract

In this paper we introduce a method to simulate fluid flows on smooth surfaces of arbitrary topology: an effect never seen before. We achieve this by combining a two-dimensional stable fluid solver with an atlas of parametrizations of a Catmull-Clark surface. The contributions of this paper are: (i) an extension of the Stable Fluids solver to arbitrary curvilinear coordinates, (ii) an elegant method to handle cross-patch boundary conditions and (iii) a set of new external forces custom tailored for surface flows. Our techniques can also be generalized to handle other types of processes on surfaces modeled by partial differential equations, such as reaction-diffusion. Some of our simulations allow a user to interactively place densities and apply forces to the surface, then watch their effects in real-time. We have also computed higher resolution animations of surface flows off-line.