Precomputed Shape Database for Real-Time Physically-Based Simulation

Adding dynamically physical properties to virtual objects can not generally be handled in real-time during a simulation. In this paper, we propose a method for handling the real-time physical simulations of arbitrary objects that are represented by their surface mesh. Our method is based on a database in which physical data are stored for a wide variety of objects. When a query object needs to be physically simulated in the virtual world, a similarity search is performed in the database and the associate physical data are then extracted. We propose and compare three different similarity search methods that fit with our real-time needs. We demonstrate our approach for the simulations of different physical phenomena such as fracture or deformations. Our results show that our method has a great potential for the physical simulation of objects represented by their surface meshes in interactive applications.