Animation of Deformation of Water Drops on Glass Surfaces

Abstract

To display realistic water drops on glass surfaces, we added a new method, that controls the shape change of water drops, to the conventional motion control method. The shape of a water drop was defined as a sphere or a metaball in the conventional method. However, this is too simple and un realistic. In addition, the shape variance based on the time water marks were created by the movement of water drops was not correctly displayed. Thus we defined a water drop as one mainmetaball surrounded by some submetaballs. By controlling the distances of the submetaballs from the mainmetaball, we can display complex shapes. For example, we can give a different shape to each water drop, which can be changed based on its states like generation, movement, union, separation, etc. Since the motion of each water drop is computed from the position and speed of the mainmetaball, conventional motion control methods can be used.