Abstract: A new framework is presented for synthesizing water animation with large size and rich
details. The main idea of our framework consists of two steps: reconstructing mesh model from
videos and spanning the mesh by quilting. First we simplify the shape from shading method which is
linearly approximated, and use it to reconstruct the outdoor water with large scale which satisfies the
Lambert surface assumption. The result is optimized with several smooth methods according to the
constraint of consistency in time and space. Then a quilting method is introduced for triangle mesh, in
which we sample smaller blocks from the constructing mesh based on the principle of distance
minimization and merge the blocks to get the seamless surface. The process is completed with four
kinds of water. Results demonstrate that the synthesized water animation has high sense of reality and
balance the scale with detail very well. This method can conveniently synthesize large-scale water
animation meeting use′s demand.

Key words: water animation, 3D-reconstruction, mesh quilting