Plateau’s Laws

I have recently been looking into some principles of physics known as “Plateau’s Laws”. These laws were introduced by Belgian physicist “Joseph Plateau”. These laws state the following:-

• Three bubbles intersecting must always do so at angles of 120 degrees. These are known as “Plateau Borders”.


• Each Plateau border intersects in fours at one point at approximately 109.47 degrees.


• Soap film surfaces are entirely smooth.


• The mean curvature of the soap film is constant on every part of the film.

I also found a blog on WordPress called “WeWantToLearn.net” which has an article discussing these laws and applying them within a program called “Grasshopper”. This is a graphical algorithm editor integrated inside another 3D program called “Rhino 3D”.

Another Test (Take 2)

I have carried out the same test as before, but this time with a higher particle count. This was done by using a higher poly sphere. I decided to do this because after meshing the first one, I noticed that the mesh turned out a bit too blobby, which I didn’t feel looked good enough. Another thing I noticed was how the particles were being meshed. When I meshed the particles created by using the “Fill Object” command, it meshed around the particles. When I meshed the particles created at each vertex of the polygon sphere however, it not only meshed around the outside of the particles but also on the inside as well. This could pose a potential problem in terms of shading the bubbles. The reason being because of the fact that bubbles are of course transparent, which means that the inner mesh would be visible when rendered.

I also meshed the second attempt and I’m more pleased with the results of this one. However, I still need to play around with the output mesh attributes in Maya a little bit more.


Maya Bubble High Particle Count from Mickey Bowen on Vimeo.

Maya Bubble High Particle Count Meshed from Mickey Bowen on Vimeo.

Another Test

I have done another test in which I attempt to recreate the effect of a bubble bursting. The first step of this process involved the use of a Python script which was written last year as part of a class exercise for my Scripting for Animation module. This script takes a user specified piece of polygon geometry, looks at each vertex in turn, gets its position in world space and places an nParticle at each vertex. I ran this script on a polygon sphere in Maya, to recreate the objects form with nParticles.

Next, I created a gravity field and applied it to the particles, set its volume shape attribute to "Sphere" and positioned it around the particles. I then checked on the "Volume Exclusion" checkbox, so that gravity would only have effect on the particles outdie of the sphere volume. Finally, I created a radial filed, set its volume shape to "Cube" and key framed its translation and scale so that it moved through the particles causing them to scatter.

The final result can be seen in the video below:-



Maya Particle Bubble Burst Test from Mickey Bowen on Vimeo.

Bursting Bubbles

I have been looking into how soap bubbles burst. I have discovered this is caused by a phenomenon called "Surface Tension". This is where a liquid surface has resistance against an external force. This is what gives a soap bubble its form. I have also researched into a principle called "LaPlace's Law". This law states that the larger the radius of the vessel (in this case being the soap bubble), the larger the surface tension needs to be to withstand the internal pressure.

I have also tested an idea for simulating the effects of a bubble bursting in Maya. I created a simple polygon sphere primitive, assigned it with a blue Blinn shader, assigned a black and white ramp node into the transparency attribute of the shader and animated the position of the colour sliders of the gradient.

Maya Bubble Burst Test from Mickey Bowen on Vimeo.

I found a video by a Vimeo user by the name of "Scubedio" in which a bubble bursting is simulated using Realflow 2012.

Soap_Bubble from scubedio on Vimeo.