We introduce a method for efficiently animating a wide range of deformable materials. We combine a high resolution surface mesh with a tetrahedral finite element simulator that makes use of frequent re-meshing. This combination allows for fast and detailed simulations of complex elastic and plastic behavior. We significantly expand the range of physical parameters that can be simulated with a single technique, and the results are free from common artifacts such as volume-loss, smoothing, popping, and the absence of thin features like strands and sheets. Our decision to couple a high resolution surface with low-resolution physics leads to efficient simulation and detailed surface features, and our approach to creating the tetrahedral mesh leads to an order-of-magnitude speedup over previous techniques in the time spent re-meshing. We compute masses, collisions, and surface tension forces on the scale of the fine mesh, which helps avoid visual artifacts due to the differing mesh resolutions. The result is a method that can simulate a large array of different material behaviors with high resolution features in a short amount of time.
REF enabled the preservation of thin viscoelastic features in finite element simulations.
Fast viscoelastic behavior with thin features
SIGGRAPH '08
Computer Science