Interactive Virtual Materials

In this paper we present a fast and robust approach for simulating elasto-plastic materials and fracture in real time. Our method extends the warped stiffness finite element approach for linear elasticity and combines it with a strain-state-based plasticity model. The internal principal stress components provided by the finite element computation are used to determine fracture locations and orientations. We also present a method to consistently animate and fracture a detailed surface mesh along with the underlying volumetric tetrahedral mesh. This multi-resolution strategy produces realistic animations of a wide spectrum of materials at interactive rates that have typically been simulated off-line thus far.