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| GI'98 Online Papers |
Simulating the Flow of Liquid Droplets
Abstract
The ever-changing nature of liquids makes them very difficult to model
and animate. This paper addresses the simulation of one aspect of liquids,
i.e. droplets running down surfaces. We present a model oriented towards
a visually-satisfying simulation and efficiency.
The efficiency results from the separation between the shape and the
motion of a droplet. The motion accounts for all changes encountered
along the path followed over a mesh of triangles. It is affected by
various properties modeled as friction, adhesion, roughness, and
collisions between droplets. Streaks are also added along the paths.
We characterize the shape of a droplet by a small set of properties,
such as volume conservation, surface tension, etc. We model them as
constraints to satisfy. The shape model is mainly based on mass-springs.
It is simple and efficient, and it guarantees that whatever the values
of the unconstrained parameters, all produced shapes satisfy the
characteristic properties, and thus, can represent different types of
droplets.
Rendered animations of various liquids illustrate the resulting simulation.
The Paper
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