Real-time cartoon water animation

Cartoon water effects have both stylized visual appearance and stylized behavior, they also vary informs and structures in different environment. In this paper we present a template-based approach for generating cartoon water effects including flowing water, water jet and ripples. First, we classify cartoon water into different types and design templates to define the underling structures for them, the low frequency information of cartoon water actions is encoded in those structures and frame-to-frame coherence is maintained during animation. Second, we design a set of cartoon water shapes that can be grouped according to some rules and placed onto corresponding templates. We also provide tools that allow the user to interactively specify the position or path of the cartoon water, and edit the size, speed as well as spacing of water shapes. Advantages of our approach are that stylized features of cartoon water can be well preserved both for forms and dynamics, furthermore, those stylized forms can be animated in real-time both in 2D and 3D. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.