On Mon, 8 Oct 2001 19:28:36 -0400, "Redbeard \(MDJohnson\)"
<red### [at] wvadelphianet> wrote:

>I've been using Hugo Elias' page (http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/) as a
>reference for my simulations.  He's got some pretty good info, and if you like
>to explore he doesn't give you *too* much.

Keep in mind that what is shown on Hugo's page is *the* most
simplistic way of doing deformable body dynamics simulation. Linear
mass-spring models are in general simpler than, say, finite element
models, but the former can be made very realistic with introducing
different improvements.

As a start, I'd recommend reading anything you can find on the
subject, esp. the works of Demetri Terzopoulos, David Baraff, Andrew
Wittkin, James O'Brien and Chen Wu.

>As for falling through the surface - I'm cheating right now.  If the
>y-coordinate is less than 0 + radius of element, it's forced to that value.
>When I start adding the ability to bounce off of surfaces I'll have to start
>using trace and being *very* careful.

Keep in mind that contact forces are *very* hard to model
realistically. Collisions are even harder, as impulse propagation in
this case is almost a stepwise process. In addition, inertia has to be
taken into account.

The geeky lingo above is to say that you can't just place some nodes
on the surface they will collide with and expect realistic results.

Maybe I'm just jealous (gelous?). Again someone beat me to it :)

Keep up the good work!

 
Peter Popov ICQ : 15002700
Personal e-mail : pet### [at] vipbg
TAG      e-mail : pet### [at] tagpovrayorg

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