Research on Atmospheric Clouds: A Review of Cloud Animation Methods in Computer Graphics

Atmospheric clouds are one of the vital elements in computer graphics especially for visualizing the natural phenomena of the atmospheric world. There is a need for understanding, designing and realizing a realistic and high- performance cloud animation system. It is a difficult task for new researchers to choose an appropriate method to represent and animate the atmospheric clouds in a virtual environment. In this paper, we therefore give an up-to-date review of the atmospheric cloud animation methods. The review is executed by searching, filtering, collecting, and analysing the main literature obtained from the selected online digital libraries and search engines. We classify, explain and discuss the existing cloud animation methods by dividing the methods systematically into six main categories: physics-driven methods, heuristics-driven methods, data-driven methods, hybrid-driven methods, control driven methods, and hardware-driven methods. We then point out the future trends of the atmospheric cloud animation research work. This review would be helpful to the new and experienced researchers as quick references and indications of the related topic in the cloud animation field. The experienced researchers might straightforwardly recognize the best or the most commonly used methods for a particular task and point out their strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, the new researchers will optimistically find a useful and up-to-date review of this field, get familiarized with the relevant resources of atmospheric cloud animation methods without consuming a lot of time and effort in looking for the desired information. This review could be used for the implementation of real-time, interactive as well as offline graphical applications.