Visual / Special Effects

Vorticity Confinement (VC), a physics based method for computer simulation of fluid dynamics, is used to simulate and control the motion of air and water. VC makes it easy to simulate the realistic behavior of objects moving in these fluids. As VC employs a simple Cartesian grid, it effortlessly accommodates any complicated 3D structure. With no need for complex grid generation schemes, VC reduces modeling computational time and costs. Also, while conventional Computational Fluid Dynamic schemes suffer from numerical dissipation errors and cannot produce realistic flow behaviors, VC avoids such errors as it is designed to be free of dissipation and it has the capability to easily generate real-time solutions. These qualities are in great demand in the special effects field. This method is fast, simple and is easily fitted into simulators.

Numerical simulations of natural phenomena such as smoke, fire and water even at large scale are both qualitatively and quantitatively accurate using VC. Examples of simulations include:

  1. Realistic depiction of smoke/clouds
  2. Smoke trails behind moving objects (such as jet planes)
  3. Turbulent wind flow
  4. Wind/Smoke around urban areas and vehicles (trains, cars etc.)
  5. Ocean waves
  6. Visual effects from explosion
VC has already been successfully used in the special effects industry in the making of films such as Harry Potter and The Core and a commercial for Levi’s Jeans by Flow Analysis, the inventor and initial developer Also, VC has become the industry standard having been used in most movies involving turbulent smoke and water flow, such as “The Day After Tomorrow”, “Terminator”, and almost all other recent films requiring these effects.

Related Videos



Levi’s Jeans Commercial - smoke simulation produced
using FAS’s Vorticity Confinement methods