Computer graphics researchers simulate the sounds of water

Splash, splatter, babble, sploosh, drip, drop, bloop and ploop!

Those are some of the sounds that have been missing from computer graphic simulations of water and other fluids, as per scientists in Cornell's Department of Computer Science, who have come up with new algorithms to simulate such sounds to go with the images.

The work by Doug James, associate professor of computer science, and graduate student Changxi Zheng will be reported at the 2009 ACM SIGGRAPH conference Aug. 3-7 in New Orleans. It is the first step in a broader research program on sound synthesis supported by a $1.2 million grant from the Human Centered Computing Program of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to James, assistant professor Kavita Bala and associate professor Steve Marschner.

In computer-animated movies, sound can be added after the fact from recordings or by Foley artists. But as virtual worlds grow increasingly interactive and immersive, the scientists point out, sounds will need to be generated automatically to fit events that can't be predicted in advance. Recordings can be cued in, but can be repetitive and not always well matched to what's happening.

"We have no way to efficiently compute the sounds of water splashing, paper crumpling, hands clapping, wind in trees or a wine glass dropped onto the floor," the scientists said in their research proposal.........