Realistic fluid animation with computer graphics technology has great practical importance in various fields such as film and television special effects and advertising, 3D game development, and virtual reality. This paper reviews the techniques and trend of fluid animation in recent years, summarizing the research results into three categories: experience-based method, physical method and data-driven method, with a comprehensive comparison of their pros and cons. In particular, this paper documents the mainstream physical methods and the latest data-driven methods.