Water Wave Animation on Mesh Surfaces

This article proposes a practical approach for simulating the phenomenon of water waves on 3D mesh surfaces. First of all, the geodesic distance map, which will govern the movement of water waves in the simulation, is computed on a given mesh surface. Based on the geodesic distance map, we then simulate the water waves on 3D surfaces using a sinusoidal wave model with damping. Our computing method for the geodesic distance map can process the scenario with multiple sources. Together with the method for superposing multiple water waves, the water waves with various sources can be simulated on the surface of a given mesh model. To demonstrate the performance of our approach, example animations are generated at the end of the paper--all can be updated in an interactive frame rate.