A procedural model for interactive animation of breaking ocean waves

Abstract

This paper presents a procedural model for breaking ocean waves that is intended to be used for interactive visualization. The movement as well as the appearance of the waves is modelled by a set of functions in dependence of time and space. This continuous surface description allowes it to calculate all properties of every point (including foam) on the ocean surface at every time without any information from previous time steps. By using an adaptive sampling sheme for rendering, the frame rate of the animation only depends on the screen resolution rather than on the model size. The model is quite simple, easy to implement, fast to compute and provides a visual appealing interactive animation of infinite large ocean coast scenes. On the other hand it provides only limited flexibility due to its procedural character. For achieving more realistic scene appearance, it may also easily be combined with models for deep-water waves presented in the past.