Proposal for the final project of CS348B
Soap Bubble
- Xiaohu Zhang (Tom) -

I have been thinking about rendering the effect of thin film interfernce since as early as the beginning of this course. It turns out that this is not unique! (as it's a suggest on the project web page, a little bit disappointing.:)

The beautiful/bizarre/extravagant colors on an ordinary soap bubble are a wonder. We learned the mechanism of this phenomenon in high school. And now we may have the ability to render it by computers! Isn't it exciting?

This may be challenging or not that challenging. Students were able to render thin-film interference seven years ago. And "Renderman" has routines for it too.

However, in order to make these two pictures, one still needs a lot of effort. The following issues are what we must solve.

  • First of all, we need to make a spectral representation of rays.
  • Second, we should implement the physics right.
  • Third, and also very difficult, is to model the shape of the two faces of the bubble correctly.

    I plan to read the paper "Foams and Bubbles: Geometry and Simulation", Intl. J. Shape Modeling, 5:1, 1999, pp 101-114. I got this information from google recently but have not yet got chance to read it.

    Feedback is eagerly anticipated. Email address: zhangxh@stanford.edu

    The following pictures are just for fun. All are from http://bubbleart.com They are Guiness Record Holders.

     

      last modified 05/22/03