Deep Fluids: A Generative Network for Parameterized Fluid Simulations
Open accessAbstract
This paper presents a novel generative model to synthesize fluid simulations from a set of reduced parameters. A convolutional neural network is trained on a collection of discrete, parameterizable fluid simulation velocity fields. Due to the capability of deep learning architectures to learn representative features of the data, our generative model is able to accurately approximate the training data set, while providing plausible interpolated in‐betweens. The proposed generative model is optimized for fluids by a novel loss function that guarantees divergence‐free velocity fields at all times. In addition, we demonstrate that we can handle complex parameterizations in reduced spaces, and advance simulations in time by integrating in the latent space with a second network. Our method models a wide variety of fluid behaviors, thus enabling applications such as fast construction of simulations, interpolation of fluids with different parameters, time re‐sampling, latent space simulations, and compression of fluid simulation data. Reconstructed velocity fields are generated up to 700× faster than re‐simulating the data with the underlying CPU solver, while achieving compression rates of up to 1300×.
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Existing attempts to integrate physics into video generation either add physics losses directly at the pixel level, which is noisy and computationally heavy, or tightly couple a generative model to a specific simulator, limiting flexibility and domain coverage.
“Existing attempts either (i) add physics losses directly at the pixel level, which is noisy and computationally heavy [51,53,54,57], or (ii) tightly couple a generative model to a specific simulator, limiting flexibility and domain coverage.”
From PhyStruct-Video: Structured Physics State Spaces for Physically Consistent Video Generation (2025) · cites this paper as [53]
Section 3.1 (pp. 3–4) describes a physics-motivated loss for reconstructed fluid velocity fields and notes that minimizing L1 distance alone can produce noise. It does not describe pixel-level physics losses for video generation or say that such losses are computationally heavy. The citation is attached to the pixel-level-loss clause, not the subsequent simulator-coupling clause. (LLM, conf=0.75)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredFor real videos, PhyStruct-Video relies on approximate geometry, materials and forces inferred from vision models and heuristics, which can introduce discrepancies between true and modeled dynamics.
“For real videos, we rely on approximate geometry, materials and forces inferred from vision models and heuristics [38,39,40,51,53,54,56].This can introduce discrepancies between the true and modeled dynamics.”
From PhyStruct-Video: Structured Physics State Spaces for Physically Consistent Video Generation (2025) · cites this paper as [53]
The Introduction (p. 2) and Conclusion (p. 11) describe generating fluid simulations from reduced parameters. The cited paper does not address the first sentence’s claim that geometry, materials, and forces for real videos are inferred using vision models and heuristics; searches for those terms found no supporting passage. The following sentence about discrepancies is the citing authors’ own conclusion. (LLM, conf=0.74)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
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Brunton, S. L., Noack, B. R., & Koumoutsakos, P. (2020) · Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics · doi:10.1146/annurev-fluid-010719-060214 · Cited by 3,063 · see citing works
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Nikitin, V. F., Karandashev, I. M., Malsagov, M. Y., & Mikhalchenko, E. V. (2022) · Acta Astronautica · doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2021.10.034 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
- Authors
- Kim, B., Azevedo, V. C., Thuerey, N., Kim, T., Gross, M., & Solenthaler, B.
- Affiliations
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- ETH Zürich
- Technical University of Munich (DE)
- Pixar Animation Studios
- Venue
- Computer Graphics Forum
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2019-05
- Volume
- 38
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 59-70
- ISSN
- 0167-7055 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-8659
- OpenAlex
- W2805869290
- Cited by
- 372
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 34 · 2024: 47 · 2023: 57 · 2022: 59 · 2021: 78 · 2020: 52 · 2019: 28
- FWCI
- 117.97
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- arxiv.org
- Locations
- Computer Graphics Forum (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design › Computer Graphics and Visualization Techniques
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Computational Mechanics › 3D Shape Modeling and Analysis
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Model Reduction and Neural Networks
- Keywords
- fluid simulation, generative models, parameterized simulation, divergence-free velocity, loss function design, latent space interpolation, convolutional neural networks
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