The aggregate motion of a flock of birds, a herd of land animals, or a school of fish is a beautiful and familiar part of the natural world. But this type of complex motion is rarely seen in computer animation. This paper explores an approach based on simulation as an alternative to scripting the paths of each bird individually. The simulated flock is an elaboration of a particle system, with the simulated birds being the particles. The aggregate motion of the simulated flock is created by a distributed behavioral model much like that at work in a natural flock; the birds choose their own course. Each simulated bird is implemented as an independent actor that navigates according to its local perception of the dynamic environment, the laws of simulated physics that rule its motion, and a set of behaviors programmed into it by the "animator." The aggregate motion of the simulated flock is the result of the dense interaction of the relatively simple behaviors of the individual simulated b...

This paper presents new algorithms to trace objects represented by densities within a volume grid, e.g. clouds, fog, flames, dust, particle systems. We develop the light scattering equations, discuss previous methods of solu-tion, and present a new approximate solution to the full three-dimensional radiative scattering problem suitable for use in computer graphics. Additionally we review dynamical models for clouds used to make an animated movie.

Abstract: In this paper we describe a method for modeling the dynamic behavior of splashing fluids. The model simulates the behavior of a fluid when objects impact or float on its surface. The forces generated by the objects create waves and splashes on the surface of the fluid. To demonstrate the realism and limitations of the model, images from a computergenerated animation are presented and compared with video frames of actual splashes occuring under similar initial conditions. 1

In this paper, we introduce techniques for animating explosions and their effects. The primary effect of an explosion is a disturbance that causes a shock wave to propagate through the surrounding medium. This disturbance determines the behavior of nearly all other secondary effects seen in explosions. We simulate the propagation of an explosion through the surrounding air using a computational fluid dynamics model based on the equations for compressible, viscous flow. To model the numerically stable formation of shocks along blast wave fronts, we employ an integration method that can handle steep pressure gradients without introducing inappropriate damping. The system includes two-way coupling between solid objects and surrounding fluid. Using this technique, we can generate a variety of effects including shaped explosive charges, a projectile propelled from a chamber by an explosion, and objects damaged by a blast. With appropriate rendering techniques, our explosion model can be used to create such visual effects as fireballs, dust clouds, and the refraction of light caused by a blast wave.

This paper describes a new computational method of fully automated anisotropic triangulation of a trimmed parametric surface. Given as input: (1) a domain geometry and (2) a 3 x 3 tensor field that specifies a desired anisotropic node-spacing, this new approach first packs ellipsoids closely in the domain by defining proximity-based interacting forces among the ellipsoids and finding a force-balancing configuration using dynamic simulation. The centers of the ellipsoids are then connected by anisotropic Delaunay triangulation for a complete mesh topology. Since a specified tensor field controls the directions and the lengths of the ellipsoids' principal axes, the method generates a high quality anisotropic mesh whose elements conform precisely to the given tensor field. Keywords: unstructured mesh, anisotropy, parametric surface, metric tensor, Delaunay triangulation 1 Introduction Although most automatic mesh generators try to create a regular isotropic mesh, in some FEM analysis an ...

This paper describes the basis for techniques such as stochastic subdivision in the theory of random processes and estimation theory. The popular stochastic subdivision construction is then generalized to provide control of the autocorrelation and spectral properties of the synthesized random functions. The generalized construction is suitable for generating a variety of perceptually distinct high-quality random functions, including those with non-fractal spectra and directional or oscillatory characteristics. It is argued that a spectral modeling approach provides a more powerful and somewhat more intuitive perceptual characterization of random processes than does the fractal model. Synthetic textures and terrains are presented as a means of visually evaluating the generalized subdivision technique. Categories and Subject Descriptors: I.3.3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation; I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three Dimensional Graphics and Realism -<F11.

Computer animations often lack the subtle environmental changes that should occur due to the actions of the characters. Squealing car tires usually leave no skid marks, airplanes rarely leave jet trails in the sky, and most runners leave no footprints. In this paper, we describe a simulation model of ground surfaces that can be deformed by the impact of rigid body models of animated characters. To demonstrate the algorithms, we show footprints made by a runner in sand, mud, and snow as well as bicycle tire tracks, a bicycle crash, and a falling runner. The shapes of the footprints in the three surfaces are quite different, but the effects were controlled through only five essentially independent parameters. To assess the realism of the resulting motion, we compare the simulated footprints to video footage of human footprints in sand.

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We address the problem of automatically reconstructing m-manifolds of unknown topology from unorganized points in metric p-spaces obtained from a noisy measurement process. The point set is first approximated by a collection of oriented primitive fuzzy sets over a range of resolutions. Hierarchical multiresolution representation is then computed based on the relation of relative containment defined on the collection. Finally, manifold structure is recovered by establishing connectivity between these primitives based on proximity, compatibility of position and orientation, and local topological constraints. The method has been successfully applied to the problem of surface reconstruction from polynocular-stereo data with many outliers. 1 Introduction In this paper we are not concerned with arbitrary unorganized point sets, but only with those obtained by a real measurement process. Stereo reconstructions are rarely interpreted as surfaces because computer stereo vision typically prod...

A novel, physically motivated deformable model for shape recovery and segmentation is presented. The model, referred to as the charged-particle model (CPM), is inspired by classical electrodynamics and is based on a simulation of charged particles moving in an electrostatic field. The charges are attracted towards the contours of the objects of interest by an electrostatic field, whose sources are computed based on the gradient-magnitude image. The electric field plays the same role as the potential forces in the snake model, while internal interactions are modeled by repulsive Coulomb forces. We demonstrate the flexibility and potential of the model in a wide variety of settings: shape recovery using manual initialization, automatic segmentation, and skeleton computation. We perform a comparative analysis of the proposed model with the active contour model and show that specific problems of the latter are surmounted by our model. The model is easily extendable to 3D and copes well with noisy images.