Graphics, Imaging, and Games Lab

This thesis develops a procedural modeling algorithm to model cumulus clouds or
objects with similar shapes and surfaces in 2 dimensions. Procedural modeling of
clouds has been extensively studied and researched in computer graphics. Most of
the literature follows physical characteristics of clouds and tries to model them using
physically-inspired simulations. Cumulus clouds, volcanic ash clouds and similar naturally
shaped bodies come in many different shapes and sizes, yet the surfaces share
similarities and possess high irregularities in details which makes them difficult to
model using conventional modeling techniques. We propose a framework for modeling
such surfaces and shapes with minimal user intervention. Our approach uses an
active contour model which propagates through a tessellation. In this thesis, we will
describe our technique for modeling cloud looking structures and we will present our
results of our algorithm and show case a simple user interactive framework as well.