Simulation and Animation Using Hardware Accelerated Procedural Textures

Introduction

This tutorial was presented at the 2003 Game Developers Conference by Greg James (NVIDIA) and Mark Harris (UNC). On this page you will find talk slides, demos, source code, and links relating to simulation and animation on the GPU.

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Talk Slides

Download Powerpoint slides from our talk, "Simulation and Animation Using Hardware Accelerated Procedural Textures".

GeForceFX Demos and Source Code

The demos here require Cg. They also depend on GLEW for GL extension initialization, but the necessary files are included with the demos. The demos have only been tested on GeForce FX hardware under Windows 2000.

"Disease"

This demo demonstrates the use of a simple reaction-diffusion simulation to generate a creepy dynamic "disease" effect in real time. download (3.14MB .zip).

"Flo"

This demo demonstrates a real-time fluid flow simulator written in Cg. It solves the Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible flow with fixed, no-slip boundaries. download (209KB .zip).

GeForce 3/4 Demos and Source Code

These demos were created by NVIDIA. Most are linked here from the NVIDIA developer relations site because they were either used in or are closely related to our tutorial. The demos work on NVIDIA GeForce 3 or better GPUs (note that this does not include the GeForce 4 Mx or GeForce 4 Go series).

"Water Interaction"

This DirectX demo demonstrates a real-time heightfield water simulator. It is also available as part of the NVIDIA SDK. download (1.23MB .zip).

"Dynamic Bump Reflection Mapping"

This OpenGL demo from NVIDIA is another demonstration of a real-time heightfield water simulator. OpenGL demo. DirectX demo.

"Game Of Life"

These demos from NVIDIA demonstrate implementation of cellular automata on a GPU. OpenGL demo. DirectX demo.

"Fire"

This DirectX demo from NVIDIA demonstrate implementation of a fire effect using a cellular automata for the embers. DirectX demo.

More Demos: NVIDIA SDK

For other demos from this talk and more, check out the NVIDIA SDK.