Went over course logistics, introductions, and a variety of animation-related research areas.

Thoughts

I’m primarily interested in simulation (most kinds) and real-time graphics, so I found the papers on yarn, fracture, and waves particularly intriguing. I was a bit surprised that the homogenized yarn simulation only produced a speedup of about 5x, since their model appeared to be a (relatively) much simpler elastic sheet with parameters fit from small scale yarn simulation. The full yarn simulation was far more compelling when the movement and texture of strands was apparent. I suppose it makes more sense for really tight weaves that are a priori closer to thin sheets. I also thought the ‘wave curves’ paper was an interesting approach, since it decoupled the large-scale fluid volume simulation from the smaller scale waves occurring on its surface, with pretty realistic results. I wonder if one could combine the two ideas by just running a finer grained solve at the fluid boundary.