Particle-Based Fluid Surface Rendering with Neural Networks
Surface reconstruction for particle-based fluid simulation is a computational challenge on par with the simula- tion itself. In real-time applications, splatting-style rendering approaches based on forward rendering of particle impostors are prevalent, but they suffer from noticeable artifacts. In this paper, we present a technique that combines forward rendering simulated features with deep-learning image manipulation to improve the rendering quality of splatting-style approaches to be perceptually similar to ray tracing solutions, circumventing the cost, complexity, and limitations of exact fluid surface rendering by replacing it with the flat cost of a neural network pass. Our solution is based on the idea of training generative deep neural networks with image pairs consisting of cheap particle impostor renders and ground truth high quality ray-traced images.