Ripple simulation based on mass-spring model and image space computation

Dynamic water surface simulation is one of the most challenging issues in computer graphics. This paper implement an effective method for simulating dynamic water ripple effect in real-time. In the method, the water surface is constructed as a mass-spring grid, and the motion status of each mass point can be computed with Hooke's law. Instead of computing the mass points' motion in three dimensional geometric space, we adopt a image-space computation approach: simulating the image deformation on each point caused by the water fluctuation to represent various dynamic water effects, including the refraction effect on water surface, wave propagation and wave attenuation. Experimental results show that the method can simulate water ripple effects realistically, and the real-time rendering performance can be achieved.