Technology Opportunities

Special effects and complex animations of smoke

Highlights

• Efficient, direct control of animated smoke as special effect
• Provides animators with precise control while eliminating need for high performance computation resources
• Generates smoke animations at low cost compared to flow simulation methods currently available
• Application in computer graphics animation and special effects tools

Our Innovation

Target driven smoke animation works by either a) explicitly defining target states into which the smoke evolves; or b) by constraining the movement of the smoke within a certain predefined limit. This allows the animator to create complex fluid movements quickly and efficiently resulting in smoke that exhibits natural-looking, interesting smoke-like behavior.

Key Features

• Affordable and cost-effective, eliminating the need for thermodynamic models
• Animator defines and controls evolving shape of the smoke
• Easy to adapt targets enabling flexibility in animation of smoke shape and size
• Quick to implement

Development Milestones

Looking for partner for industrial trials

The Opportunity

• Well-suited for various special effects animating smoke as a natural phenomenon, an effect that is a central component in contemporary computer games, training simulators, and animated films
• Overall digital imaging market valued at more than $258 billion in 2004, with 18.1% annual growth between 2004 and 2010