Photorealistic visualization and fluid animation: coupling of Maya with a two-phase Navier-Stokes fluid solver

We have coupled the three-dimensional solver for the two-phase incompressible Navier-Stokes equations NaSt3DGPF with Autodesk Maya. Maya is the industry standard software framework for the creation of three-dimensional animations. The parallel level-set-based fluid solver NaSt3DGPF simulates the interaction of two fluids like air and water. It uses high-order finite difference discretization methods that are designed for physics applications. By coupling both applications, we are now able to set up scientific fluid simulations in an easy-to-use user interface. Moreover, the rendering techniques provided by Maya allow us to create photorealistic visualizations for computational fluid dynamics problems and support the creation of highly visually realistic fluid simulations for animation movies. Altogether, we obtain an easy usable and fully coupled fluid animation toolkit for two-phase fluid simulations. These are the first published results of the full integration of a physics-oriented, high-order grid-based parallel two-phase fluid solver in Maya, at least to our knowledge.