Photo by 20th Century Fox/courtesy Everett Collection
Before 1998, computer fluid effects were animated manually, rather than simulated. The famous “water tentacle” from The Abyss was created by digitally painting a water “skin” over the computer model of a solid tentacle. The CG supervisor for The Abyss was John Knoll, Adobe Photoshop inventor and Industrial Light and Magic effects guru.
The 1998 Dreamworks movie Antz was the first film where the fluid animation was the result of simulation. However, the process of animating the fluids in the movie was complex and time consuming. The following year, Jos Stam presented a paper that simplified the simulation process enough to be used quickly and practically.