The Visual Computer (2013)
Real-time simulation of lightweight rigid bodies
Haoran Xie and Kazunori Miyata
Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
Abstract
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Unlike common rigid bodies, lightweight rigid
bodies have special and spectacular motions that are known
as free fall, such as fluttering (oscillation from side to side)
and tumbling (rotation and sideways drifting). However,
computer graphics applications cannot simulate the dynamics
of lightweight rigid bodies in various environments realistically
and efficiently. In this study, we first analyze
the physical characteristics of free-fall motions in quiescent
flow and propose a new procedural motion-synthesis method
for modeling free-fall motions in interactive environments.
Six primitive motions of lightweight rigid bodies are defined
in a phase diagram and analyzed separately using a
trajectory-search tree and precomputed trajectory database.
The global paths of free-fall motions are synthesized on the
basis of these primitive motions by using a free-fall motion
graph whose edges are connected in the Markov-chain
model. Then, our approach integrates external forces (e.g.,
a wind field) by using an improved noise-based algorithm
under different force magnitudes and object release heights.
This approach exhibits not only realistic simulation results
in various environments but also fast computation to meet
real-time requirements.