Abstract: We propose a geometric approach to animating thin surface features of smoothed particle hydrodynamics-based water. Explicit interparticle connections are created among smoothed particle hydrodynamics particles to approximate the geometries of thin surfaces while addressing the issue of unresolved surface areas. The deformations measured on the connections actuate the animations of the surfaces by disconnecting the stretched and bent connections. The reconstruction of thin surfaces and the accuracy of the animation are improved by adding auxiliary particles over the connections via Poisson-disk sampling. Copyright 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.