GPU-supported bubble and foam rendering

Several types of foam can be found both in nature and artificial environments; yet it is rare in computer graphics due to its complexity. Modelling foam structure and dynamics by simulating the underlying bubble structure has a high computational cost. To model such a complex phenomena we need to use serious simplifications while maintaining realism and detail. In this paper we propose a method for rendering dense soap foam in real time. We first build a foam blob — from realistic soap bubbles — which has a solid inner structure. We use a hybrid method based on ray tracing and 2D billboards to render dense foam constructed from hundreds of these blobs. To model foam behaviour and interaction, we present a simple particle based physics simulation approach. While our method is capable of rendering foam featuring a large number of bubbles, it has certain limitations we also discuss in this paper.