Given a sequence of poses of a body we study the motion resulting when the body is
immersed in a (possibly) moving, incompressible medium. With the poses given, say, by an
animator, the governing second-order ordinary differential equations are those of a
rigid body with time-dependent inertia acted upon by various forces. Some of these
forces, like lift and drag, depend on the motion of the body in the surrounding medium.
Additionally, the inertia must encode the effect of the medium through its added mass.
We derive the corresponding dynamics equations which generalize the standard rigid body
dynamics equations. All forces are based on local computations using only physical
parameters such as mass density. Notably, we approximate the effect of the medium on the
body through local computations avoiding any global simulation of the medium.
Consequently, the system of equations we must integrate in time is only six dimensional
(rotation and translation). Our proposed algorithm displays linear complexity and
captures intricate natural phenomena that depend on body-fluid interactions.