Towards efficiency in cloth simulation

Abstract

Cloth simulation is an extremely expensive task. Realistic cloth models coupled with stable numerical integration demand all the processing power we can spend. Although implicit integration schemes allow us to use large time steps, the exponential time complexity limits the number of particles that are reasonable to use in any simulation. In this paper, we present a technique that simulates cloth surfaces with adaptive level of detail without degrading the surface physical properties or the stability of the simulation. The underlying mesh operations are derived from subdivision surfaces, but rules are adapted to prevent the numerical simulation from diverging. We also demonstrate how the model constants can be specified in a resolution independent way.While the use of DLOD effectively allows the formation of folds and wrinkles, the final appearance can still be far from smooth. To further increase the realism we can use a GPU post processing algorithm to smooth the final rendered surface. © 2008 Springer-Verlag.