Imran Khan
wisk at ucsc dot edu
This program is my final project for CS 161. It is a water visualization
tool using metaballs.
I made two attempts at this assignment the first of which core dumps when
the actuall isosurfacing is attempted. The second uses VTK and works, albiet
slowly. This latter code is described further on.
This program renders a stream of water using MetaBalls and Particles.
See This report for more information on the process involved.
When started, two windows appear. The First is the viewing window, and
this has a green background with an offset 'V' to the left. The intersection
of the V is where the Water is emmited from. This has controls to affect
the 'skin' of the water, and the animation controls.
The second window controls the particle system. The upper two sliders
control the amount of randomness in the system, called the variaton, and
the default strength of each particle. The Verticle slider controls the global
scale of the particle system. Below the Strength slider are 6 sliders which
control Acceleration and Initial Velocity in the 3 coo-ordinates. Particles
can only have Positlve X accerlerations and Velocitys because the Emmiter
is at the edge of the -X side of the screen.
To use, simply play with the sliders in the particle system window, and
look in the viewing window for a good distribution of water. Then drag the
Bottom Slider in the viewing window to vary the thickness of the skin. When
you release the slider, the skin will update in the viewport.
Above is the particle window with controls set to produce the image below,
of water arcing down as if shot from a hose. Note the large value of the
botttom slider to produce the tight skin.
