Mmm... someone else playing with springs... ;-)

You're welcome to have a look at the code I used for my spring mesh... In my
implementation, the springs go "slack" below a certain length, but it would
be easy enough to comment out the requisit #if statement to cause repulsion
as well as attraction. (Small note: for God's sake, get the endpoints the
right way round! lmao...)

I suspect a fully-interconnected mesh would a) take ages to calculate, but
more importantly b) be unnecessary. I doubt the atoms on one side of a drop
of water are in any way directly effected by the atoms on the opposite side
of the drop...

Someone else has already pointed out that the internal pressure of the drop
is important; I would use a volumetric model. I would create a sphere, with
"nodes" throughout its interior, and with each node linked to its nearest
neighbors only. The important thing is that the nodes on the surface are
doubly-linked to their neighbors - isn't that how *real* surface tension
happens?

If you only want to deform a drop as it rests on some surface, that will
probably work... (I presume you're gonna use blobs or some such to turn all
these nodes into something that looks like a "surface"?) Will probably fail
for animation of more complex effects - you would need the nodes to be
attacted to their *nearest* partners, which might change if there's
significant movement... but it would work ok just for this.

Actually, I was planning to try some things like this myself - that's why I
developed the spring mesh... Hmm... if only I had more time...

Thanks.
Andrew.

Post a reply to this message