Category: Deformables

Adaptive Nonlinearity for Collisions in Complex Rod Assemblies

Danny M. Kaufman, Rasmus Tamstorf, Breannan Smith, Jean-Marie Aubry, Eitan Grinspun

We develop an algorithm for the efficient and stable simulation of large-scale elastic rod assemblies. We observe that the time-integration step is severely restricted by a strong nonlinearity in the response of stretching modes to transversal impact, the degree of this nonlinearity varying greatly with the shape of the rod. Building on these observations, we propose the ADONIS collision response algorithm that adapts the degree of nonlinearity in impact solves. We illustrate the advantages of the ADONIS algorithm by analyzing simulations involving elastic rod assemblies of varying density and scale, with up to 1.7 million individual contacts per time step.

Adaptive Nonlinearity for Collisions in Complex Rod Assemblies

Stable Orthotropic Materials

Yijing Li, Jernej Barbič

Isotropic Finite Element Method (FEM) deformable object simulations are widely used in computer graphics. Several applications (wood, plants, muscles) require modeling the directional dependence of the material elastic properties in three orthogonal directions. We investigate orthotropic materials, a special class of anisotropic materials where the shear stresses are decoupled from normal stresses. Orthotropic materials generalize transversely isotropic materials, by exhibiting different stiffnesses in three orthogonal directions. Orthotropic materials are, however, parameterized by nine values that are difficult to tune in practice, as poorly adjusted settings easily lead to simulation instabilities. We present a user-friendly approach to setting these parameters that is guaranteed to be stable. Our approach is intuitive as it extends the familiar intuition known from isotropic materials. We demonstrate our technique by augmenting linear corotational FEM implementations with orthotropic materials.

Stable Orthotropic Materials

Projective Dynamics: Fusing Constraint Projections for Fast Simulation

Sofien Bouaziz, Sebastian Martin, Tiantian Liu, Ladislav Kavan, Mark Pauly

We present a new method for implicit time integration of physical systems. Our approach builds a bridge between nodal Finite Element methods and Position Based Dynamics, leading to a simple, efficient, robust, yet accurate solver that supports many different types of constraints. We propose specially designed energy potentials that can be solved efficiently using an alternating optimization approach. Inspired by continuum mechanics, we derive a set of continuum-based
potentials that can be efficiently incorporated within our solver. We demonstrate the generality and robustness of our approach in many different applications ranging from the simulation of solids, cloths, and shells, to example-based  simulation. Comparisons to Newton-based and Position Based Dynamics solvers highlight the benefits of our formulation.

Projective Dynamics: Fusing Constraint Projections for Fast Simulation

Strain-Based Dynamics

Matthias Mueller, Nuttapong Chentanez, Tae-Yong Kim, Miles Macklin

We propose a new set of constraints within the Position Based Dynamics (PBD) framework that allow the control of strain in directions that are independent of the edge directions of the simulation mesh. Instead of constraining distances between points, we constrain the entries of the Green – St Venant strain tensor. Varying the stiffness values corresponding to the individual strain coefficients lets us simulate anisotropic behavior. By working with Green’s rotation-independent, non-linear strain tensor directly we do not have to perform a polar decomposition of the deformation gradient as in most strain limiting approaches. In addition, we propose a modification of the constraints corresponding to the diagonal entries of the strain tensor such that they can be solved in a single step and a modification of the constraints corresponding to the off-diagonal entries to decouple stretch from shear resistance. By formulating the constraints within the PBD framework, they can be used not only for strain limiting but to perform the actual simulation of the deformable object whereas traditional strain limiting methods have to be paired with a separate simulation method.

Strain-Based Dynamics

Unified Particle Physics for Real-Time Applications

Miles Macklin, Matthias Müller, Nuttapong Chentanez, and Tae-Yong Kim

We present a unified dynamics framework for real-time visual effects. Using particles connected by constraints as our fundamental building block allows us to treat contact and collisions in a unified manner, and we show how this representation is flexible enough to model gases, liquids, deformable solids, rigid bodies and clothing with two-way interactions. We address some common problems with traditional particle based methods and describe a parallel constraint solver based on position based dynamics that is efficient enough for real-time applications.

Unified Particle Physics for Real-Time Applications

Space-Time Editing of Elastic Motions through Material Optimization and Reduction

Siwang Li, Jin Huang, Fernando de Goes, Xiaogang Jin, Hujun Bao, and Mathieu Desbrun

We present a novel method for elastic animation editing with spacetime constraints. In a sharp departure from previous approaches, we not only optimize control forces added to a linearized dynamic model, but also optimize material properties to better match user constraints and provide plausible and consistent motion. Our approach achieves efficiency and scalability by performing all computations in a reduced rotation-strain (RS) space constructed with both cubature and geometric reduction, leading to two orders of magnitude improvement over the original RS method. We demonstrate the utility and versatility of our method in various applications, including motion editing, pose interpolation, and estimation of material parameters from existing animation sequences.

Space-Time Editing of Elastic Motions through Material Optimization and Reduction

Simulating Articulated Subspace Self-Contact

Yun Teng, Miguel Otaduy, Theodore Kim

We present an efficient new subspace method for simulating the self-contact of articulated deformable bodies, such as characters. Self-contact is highly structured in this setting, as the limited space of possible articulations produces a predictable set of coherent collisions. Subspace methods can leverage this coherence, and have been used in the past to accelerate the collision detection stage of contact simulation. We show that these methods can be used to accelerate the entire contact computation, and allow self-contact to be resolved without looking at all of the contact points. Our analysis of the problem yields a broader insight into the types of nonlinearities that subspace methods can efficiently approximate, and leads us to design a pose-space cubature scheme. Our algorithm accelerates self-contact by up to an order of magnitude over other subspace simulations, and accelerates the overall simulation by two orders of magnitude over full-rank simulations. We demonstrate the simulation of high resolution (100K – 400K elements) meshes
in self-contact at interactive rates (5.8 – 50 FPS).

Simulating Articulated Subspace Self-Contact

Animating Deformable Objects using Sparse Spacetime Constraints

Christian Schulz, Christoph von Tycowicz, Hans-Peter Seidel, Klaus Hildebrandt

We propose a scheme for animating deformable objects based on spacetime optimization. The main feature is that it robustly and quickly (within a few seconds) generates interesting motion from a sparse set of spacetime constraints. Providing only partial (as opposed to full) keyframes for positions and velocities is sufficient. The computed motion satisfies the constraints and the remaining degrees of freedom are determined by physical principles using elasticity and the spacetime constraints paradigm. Our modeling of the spacetime optimization problem combines dimensional reduction, modal coordinates, wiggly splines, and rotation strain warping. Controlling the warped motion requires the derivative of the warp map. We derive a representation of the derivative that can be efficiently and robustly evaluated. Our solver is based on a theorem that characterizes the solutions of the optimization problem and allows us to restrict the optimization to very low-dimensional search spaces. This treatment of the optimization problem avoids a time discretization and the resulting method can robustly deal with sparse input and wiggly motion.

Animating Deformable Objects using Sparse Spacetime Constraints

Deformation Embedding for Point-Based Elastoplastic Simulation

B. Jones, S. Ward, A. Jallepalli, J. Perenia, and A. W. Bargteil

We present a straightforward, easy-to-implement, point-based approach for animating elastoplastic materials. The core idea of our approach is the introduction of embedded space, the least-squares best fit of the material’s rest state into three dimensions. Nearest neighbor queries in the embedded space efficiently update particle neighborhoods to account for plastic flow. These queries are simpler and more efficient than remeshing strategies employed in mesh-based finite element methods. We also introduce a new estimate for the volume of a particle, allowing particle masses to vary spatially and temporally with fixed density. Our approach can handle simultaneous extreme elastic and plastic deformations. We demonstrate our approach on a variety of examples that exhibit a wide range of material behaviors.

Deformation Embedding for Point-Based Elastoplastic Simulation

Physically Based Character Skinning

Crispin Deul, Jan Bender

In this paper we present a novel multi-layer model for physically-based character skinning. In contrast to geometric approaches which are commonly used in the field of character skinning, physically-based methods can simulate secondary motion effects. Furthermore, these methods can handle collisions and preserve the volume of the model without the need of an additional post-process. Physically-based approaches are computationally more expensive than geometric methods but they provide more realistic results. Recent works in this area use finite element simulations to model the elastic behavior of skin. These methods require the generation of a volumetric mesh for the skin shape in a pre-processing step. It is not easy for an artist to model the different elastic behaviors of muscles, fat and skin using a volumetric mesh since there is no clear assignment between volume elements and tissue types. For our novel multi-layer model the mesh generation is very simple and can be performed automatically. Furthermore, the model contains a layer for each kind of tissue. Therefore, the artist can easily control the elastic behavior by adjusting the stiffness parameters for muscles, fat and skin. We use shape matching with oriented particles and a fast summation technique to simulate the elastic behavior of our skin model and a position-based constraint enforcement to handle collisions, volume conservation and the coupling of the skeleton with the deformable model. Position-based methods have the advantage that they are fast, unconditionally stable, controllable and provide visually plausible results.

Physically Based Character Skinning