Simulation and authoring of lava flows in virtual terrains

The demand for realistic and customizable virtual environments in computer graphics has led to the development of various simulation models. This thesis presents an interactive rendering lava simulation tool, enabling the authoring of virtual environments with realistic volcanic phenomena. The implemented program utilizes MOLASSES as a fast result model and MAGFLOW as the physically-based lava simulation model, which accurately captures the complex behavior of flowing lava, including viscosity, cooling, solidification, and yield strength effects. To achieve interactivity, we employ advanced computational techniques, such as GPU parallelization and spatial partitioning algorithms using the Taichi framework in Python, to efficiently handle the computational demands of the simulation. This allows for responsive user interactions and immediate visual feedback, empowering artists to make dynamic adjustments to the lava flow parameters and scene composition. Furthermore, our system offers a range of intuitive controls and parameters, empowering artists to manipulate various aspects of the lava simulation, such as viscosity, eruption rate, heat, lava quantity, and terrain interaction. These controls are designed to be artist-friendly, enabling easy experimentation and exploration of different lava flow patterns and visual effects. Through experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness and user-friendliness of our real-time lava simulation program, offering a valuable tool for creating immersive virtual environments and visual effects