Animated beer smooth to pour

Researchers from CSIRO and Korea’s ETRI will pour a virtual glass of
beer in San Diego next week at SIGGRAPH 07, the world’s largest computer
graphics conference, to showcase their innovative fluid special effects
software.

CSIRO fluids researcher Dr Mahesh Prakash says the physics of bubble
creation in carbonated drinks like beer is complex.

“As you pour beer into a glass, you see bubbles appearing on what are
called nucleation sites, where the glass isn’t quite smooth,” Dr Prakash
says.

“The bubbles expand to a certain size then rise up in streams to the
surface, where they bump into each other and form a raft of foam that
floats on the top.”

Dr Prakash and his colleagues have captured the maths describing these
processes in software that allows movie makers, film production houses
and others to create super-realistic special effects.