Animations of Lattice-based Deformation and Fracturing of Elastic Objects using Hierarchical Data Structure

Abstract

Simulation of deformation and fracturing of objects has been widely studied in computer graphics. One of the main goals is to accomplish such simulations with little computational cost in a numerically stable way. The proposed method presents a fast simulation technique that approximates an object with a lattice, manages the lattice with a hierarchical data structure and a lattice in a different level of the hierarchy is used according to the deformed shape of the object and the condition of fracturing. By applying a virtual force derived geometrically to each lattice point, the present method can calculate deformation and fracturing of objects stably. While the existing method cannot keep the stiffness of the object in different levels of the hierarchy, the present method modifies the computation so that the stiffness is maintained uniform by introducing a stiffness parameter that does not depend on the hierarchy. This extension enables visually more plausible animations of deformation and fracturing than previous methods.