Interactive Simulation and Rendering of Heterogeneous Deformable Bodies
Joachim Georgii, Rüdiger Westermann
Computer Graphics and Visualization Group, Technische Universität München, Germany
Background
In this paper, we present an interactive method for physics-based simulation and rendering of deformable bodies exhibiting heterogeneous material properties. To fully exploit the capabilities of consumer class computer systems, a CPU simulation engine is run in parallel with a GPU render engine. On the simulation side, we have developed a numerical multigrid solver for the governing equations of motion of deformable bodies. This solver allows for the combination of implicit solution methods and varying material parameters into an unconditionally stable simulation support system. The deformable model is rendered using a high-resolution surface mesh, which is subsequently updated on the GPU to exploit parallelism and memory bandwidth. Rendering of the deformed mesh can thus be performed without any additional bus-transfer. The interactive system is open to a variety of different applications ranging from surgery simulation, medical imaging and solid mechanics to computer animation and virtual sculpting.
The deformation of a tetrahedral horse model is shown. From left to right we show the initial model, the model exhibiting homogeneous and inhomogeneous stiffness under gravity, and the heterogenous model under external forces.
