Interactive 3D fluid jet painting

We present an interactive system which allows users to create abstract paintings in the style of Jackson Pollock using three dimensional viscous fluid jets. Pollock's paintings were created by using streams of household paint to make guided, semi-random patterns on his canvas. Our fluid jet model consists of two coupled simulations: a Navier-Stokes solver for an axis-symmetric fluid column and a linked-mass system for tracking the three dimensional motion of the jet's axis line. The paint trails left by the jets are represented using implicit surfaces. Our system also includes an algorithm for generating the splatter patterns created by the impacts of a high-speed fluid drops. We allow users to analyze the fractal properties of the images they create, comparing them to those known to exist in Pollock's own paintings.