Stylized Keyframe Animation of Fluid Simulations

An upward-flowing jet of ink rendered in oil pastel. An underlying simulation is used as input to guide the artwork (frame 45 is shown). Frames 50, 60 and 70 are hand-drawn keyframes, while the remaining in-betweens were generated automatically by our system. We present a method that combines hand-drawn artwork with fluid simulations to produce animated fluids in the visual style of the artwork. Given a fluid simulation and a set of keyframes rendered by the artist in any medium, our system produces a set of in-betweens that visually matches the style of the keyframes and roughly follows the motion from the underlying simulation. Our method leverages recent advances in patch-based regenerative morphing and image melding to produce temporally coherent sequences with visual fidelity to the target medium. Because direct application of these methods results in motion that is generally not fluid-like, we adapt them to produce motion closely matching that of the underlying simulation. The resulting animation is visually and temporally coherent, stylistically consistent with the given keyframes, and approximately matches the motion from the simulation. We demonstrate the method with animations in a variety of visual styles.