Month: December 2008

Simulation of Two-Phase Flow with Sub-Scale Droplets and Bubble Effects

We present a new Eulerian-Lagrangian method for physics-based simulation of fluid flow, which includes automatic generation of sub-scale spray and bubbles. The Marker Level Set method is used to provide a simple geometric criterion for free marker generation. A filtering method, inspired from Weber number thresholding, further controls the free marker generation (in a physics-based manner). Two separate models are used, one for sub-scale droplets, the other for sub-scale bubbles. Droplets are evolved in a Newtonian manner, using a density extension drag force field, while bubbles are evolved using a model based on Stokes’ Law. We show that our model for sub-scale droplet and bubble dynamics is simple to couple with a full (macro-scale) Navier-Stokes two-phase flow model and is quite powerful in its applications. Our animations include coarse grained multiphase features interacting with fine scale multiphase features.

Simulation of Two-Phase Flow with Sub-Scale Droplets and Bubble Effects

Real-Time Fluid Simulation Using Discrete Sine/Cosine Transforms

Recent advances in fluid simulations have yielded exceptionally realistic imagery. However, most algorithms have computational requirements that are prohibitive for real-time simulations. Using Fourier based solutions mitigates this issue, although due to wraparound, boundary conditions are not naturally available, leading to inconsistencies near the boundary. We show that slip boundary conditions can be imposed by solving the mass conservation step using cosine and sine transforms instead of the Fourier transform.
Further, we show that measures against density dissipation can be computed using cosine transforms and we describe a new method to compute surface tension in the same domain. This combination of related algorithms leads to real-time simulations with boundary conditions.

Real-Time Fluid Simulation Using Discrete Sine/Cosine Transforms

Implicit Contact Handling for Deformable Objects

We present an algorithm for robust and efficient contact handling of deformable objects. By being aware of the internal dynamics of the colliding objects, our algorithm provides smooth rolling and sliding, stable stacking, robust impact handling, and seamless coupling of heterogeneous objects, all in a unified manner. We achieve dynamicsawareness through a constrained dynamics formulation with implicit complementarity constraints, and we present two major contributions that enable an efficient solution of the constrained dynamics problem: a time stepping algorithm that robustly ensures non-penetration and progressively refines the formulation of constrained dynamics, and a new solver for large mixed linear complementarity problems, based on iterative constraint anticipation. We show the application of our algorithm in challenging scenarios such as multi-layered cloth moving at high velocities, or colliding deformable solids simulated with large time steps.

Implicit Contact Handling for Deformable Objects

Mixing Fluids and Granular Materials

Fluid animations in computer graphics show interactions with various kinds of objects. However, fluid flowing through a granular material such as sand is still not possible within current frameworks. In this paper, we present the simulation of fine granular materials interacting with fluids. We propose a unified Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics framework for the simulation of both fluid and granular material. The granular volume is simulated as a continuous material sampled by particles. By incorporating previous work on porous flow in this simulation framework we are able to fully couple fluid and sand. Fluid can now percolate between sand grains and influence the physical properties of the sand volume. Our method demonstrates various new effects such as dry soil transforming into mud pools by rain or rigid sand structures being eroded by waves.

Mixing Fluids and Granular Materials

Scalable Real-Time Animation of Rivers

Many recent games and applications target the interactive exploration of realistic large scale worlds. These worlds consist mostly of static terrain models, as the simulation of animated fluids in these virtual worlds is computation- ally expensive. Adding flowing fluids, such as rivers, to these virtual worlds would greatly enhance their realism, but causes specific issues: as the user is usually observing the world at close range, small scale details such as waves and ripples are important. However, the large scale of the world makes classical methods impractical for simulating these effects. In this paper, we present an algorithm for the interactive simulation of realistic flowing fluids in large virtual worlds. Our method relies on two key contributions: the local computation of the velocity field of a steady flow given boundary conditions, and the advection of small scale details on a fluid, following the velocity field, and uniformly sampled in screen space.

Scalable Real-Time Animation of Rivers

Hydraulic Erosion Using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

This paper presents a new technique for modification of 3D terrains by hydraulic erosion. It efficiently couples fluid simulation using a Lagrangian approach, namely the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method, and a physically-based erosion model adopted from an Eulerian approach. The eroded sediment is associated with the SPH particles and is advected both implicitly, due to the particle motion, and explicitly, through an additional velocity field, which accounts for the sediment transfer between the particles. We propose a new donor-acceptor scheme for the explicit advection in SPH. Boundary particles associated to the terrain are used to mediate sediment exchange between the SPH particles and the terrain itself. Our results show that this particle-based method is efficient for the erosion of dense, large, and sparse fluid. Our implementation provides interactive results for scenes with up to 25,000 particles.

Hydraulic Erosion Using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

Parallel Simulation of Inextensible Cloth

This paper presents an efficient simulation method for parallel cloth simulation. The presented method uses an impulse-based approach for the simulation. Cloth simulation has many application areas like computer animation, computer games or virtual reality. Simulation methods often make the assumption that cloth is an elastic material. In this way the simulation can be performed very efficiently by using spring forces. These methods disregard the fact that many textiles cannot be stretched significantly. The simulation of inextensible textiles with methods based on spring forces leads to stiff differential equations which cause a loss of performance. In contrast to that, in this paper a method is presented that simulates cloth by using impulses. The mesh of a cloth model is subdivided into strips of constraints. The impulses for each strip can be computed in linear time. The strips that have no common particle are independent from each other and can be solved in parallel. The impulse-based method allows the realistic simulation of inextensible textiles in real-time.

Parallel simulation of inextensible cloth

A Geometric Deformation Model for Stable Cloth Simulation

We propose an adapted shape-matching approach for the efficient and robust simulation of clothing. A combination of two different cluster types is employed to account for high stretching and shearing, and low bending resistance. Due to the inherent handling of overshooting issues, the proposed shape-matching deformation model is robust. The proposed cluster types allow for a computationally efficient handling of bending. The geometric deformation model is combined with a novel collision handling approach. The technique employs spatial subdivision to detect collisions and self-collisions. The response scheme is derived from an existing approach for elastic rods. To illustrate the physically plausible dynamics of our approach, it is compared to a traditional physically-based deformation model. Experiments indicate that similar cloth properties can be reproduced with both models. The computational efficiency of the proposed scheme enables the interactive animation of clothing and shells.

A Geometric Deformation Model for Stable Cloth Simulation

Seams and Bending in Cloth Simulation

Accurate modeling of bending behavior is one of the most important tasks in the field of cloth simulation. Bending stiffness is probably the most significant material parameter describing a given textile. Much work has been done in recent years to allow a fast and authentic reproduction of the effect of bending in cloth simulation systems. However, these approaches usually treat the textiles as consisting of a single, homogeneous material. The effects of seams, interlining and multilayer materials have not been considered so far. Recent work showed that the bending stiffness of a textile is greatly influenced by the presence of seams and that a good cloth simulation system needs to consider these effects.
In this work we show how accurate modeling of bending and seams can be achieved in a state-of-the-art cloth simulation system. Our system can make use of measured bending stiffness data, but also allows intuitive user control, if desired. We verify our approach using virtual draping tests and garments in the simulation and comparing the results to their real-world counterparts. Furthermore, we provide heuristics derived from measurements that can be used to approximate the influence of several common types of seams.

Seams and Bending in Cloth Simulation

Corotated Finite Elements Made Fast and Stable

Multigrid finite-element solvers using the corotational formulation of finite elements provide an attractive means for the simulation of deformable bodies exhibiting linear elastic response. The separation of rigid body motions from the total element motions using purely geometric methods or polar decomposition of the deformation gradient, however, can introduce instabilities for large element rotations and deformations. Furthermore, the integration of the corotational formulation into dynamic multigrid elasticity simulations requires to continually rebuild consistent system matrices at different resolution levels. The computational load imposed by these updates prohibits the use of large numbers of finite elements at rates comparable to the small-strain finite element formulation. To overcome the first problem, we present a new method to extract the rigid body motion from total finite element displacements based on energy minimization. This results in a very stable corotational formulation that only slightly increases the computational overhead. We address the second problem by introducing a novel algorithm for computing sparse products of the form RKRT, as they have to be evaluated to update the multigrid hierarchy. By reformulating the problem into the simultaneous processing of a sequential data and control stream, cache miss penalties are significantly reduced. Even though the algorithm increases memory requirements, it accelerates the multigrid FE simulation by a factor of up to 4 compared to previous multigrid approaches. Due to the proposed improvements, finite element deformable body simulations using the corotational formulation can be performed at rates of 17 tps for up to 12k elements.

Corotated Finite Elements Made Fast and Stable