Deformables

Thoughts

• Spent quite a bit of time talking about Monster Mash. The tool is quite fun and interactive, even for people with zero previous 3d modelling/animation experience. That much is impressive - I’ve done a bit of modelling/rigging/animation myself in the last year and I can say it’s very hard to get into, as I’m still quite bad at it. Their joint optimization for inflation works surprisingly well, with seemingly no issues on any inputs. I do wonder where it breaks down, and if it messes up with slightly disconnected/off drawings. Finally, it’s funny that no one had every just let the optimization run and render in real time in order to give the result a natural feeling of springiness and deformation. I think that actually made the user experience way better than it would have been if we had to wait for the optimization to converge every time.
• I’m not too familiar with finite element techniques in general, but I imagine all the mechanical engineering topics like computing volumetric stress and strain are used in most fracture/physical deformation simulations. I wonder if elastic/plastic deformation are correctly modelled, and how we specify those for various (possibly anisotropic) materials. I have heard the Young’s modulus determines most of this, hmm…