Progressing Level-of-Detail Animation of Volumetric Elastodynamics

2025-09-16

AI Summary

This work addresses the high computational cost and low design iteration efficiency inherent in high-resolution volumetric elastodynamic simulation. We propose the first progressive dynamic level-of-detail (LOD) modeling framework tailored for voxel-based finite element methods. Our core contributions are threefold: (1) a topology-aware prolongation operator construction algorithm that enables efficient interpolation across non-conforming overlapping grids via boundary-binding constraints; (2) seamless integration of multiple coordinate-based deformation methods—including barycentric, biharmonic, and Phong coordinates—as plug-and-play components; and (3) a hierarchical multi-resolution mesh structure to drive coarse-to-fine dynamical coupling. Experiments demonstrate that our method significantly improves dynamic fidelity between low-resolution previews and high-resolution ground truth under challenging scenarios—such as high-speed motion, large deformations, and frictional contact—thereby enabling rapid and reliable animation design iteration.

Technology Category

• Computer Vision: Low Level & Physics-based Vision
• Search and Optimization: Sampling/Simulation-based Search
• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters

Application Category

• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Virtualization and resource management in Web systems and infrastructures

Abstract

We extend the progressive dynamics model (Zhang et al., 2024) from cloth and shell simulation to volumetric finite elements, enabling an efficient level-of-detail (LOD) animation-design pipeline with predictive coarse-resolution previews facilitating rapid iterative design for a final, to-be-generated, high-resolution animation of volumetric elastodynamics. This extension to volumetric domains poses significant new challenges, including the construction of suitable mesh hierarchies and the definition of effective prolongation operators for codimension-0 progressive dynamics. To address these challenges, we propose a practical method for defining multiresolution hierarchies and, more importantly, introduce a simple yet effective topology-aware algorithm for constructing prolongation operators between overlapping (but not necessarily conforming) volumetric meshes. Our key insight is a boundary binding strategy that enables the computation of barycentric coordinates, allowing several off-the-shelf interpolants -- such as standard barycentric coordinates, Biharmonic Coordinates (Wang et al., 2015), and Phong Deformation (James, 2020) -- to serve as "plug-and-play" components for prolongation with minimal modification. We show that our progressive volumetric simulation framework achieves high-fidelity matching LOD animation across resolutions including challenging dynamics with high speeds, large deformations, and frictional contact.

Problem

• Extending progressive dynamics to volumetric elastodynamics simulation
• Constructing mesh hierarchies for codimension-0 progressive dynamics
• Developing topology-aware prolongation operators for overlapping meshes

Innovation

• Extends progressive dynamics to volumetric finite elements
• Introduces topology-aware prolongation operator algorithm
• Uses boundary binding strategy for plug-and-play interpolants