Energy Stability and Fracture for Frame Rate Rigid Body Simulations

Abstract

Our goal is to design robust algorithms that can be used for building real-time systems, but rather than starting with overly simplistic particle-based methods, we aim to modify higher-end visual effects algorithms. A major stumbling block in utilizing these visual effects algorithms for real-time simulation is their computational intensity. Physics engines struggle to fully exploit available resources to handle high scene complexity due to their need to divide those resources among many smaller time steps, and thus to obtain the maximum spatial complexity we design our algorithms to take only one time step per frame. This requires addressing both accuracy and stability issues for collisions, contact, and evolution in a manner significantly different from a typical simulation in which one can rely on shrinking the time step to ameliorate accuracy and stability issues. In this paper we present a novel algorithm for conserving both energy and momentum when advancing rigid body orientations, as well as a novel technique for clamping energy gain during contact and collisions. We also introduce a technique for fast and realistic fracture of rigid bodies using a novel collision-centered prescoring algorithm.