Interactive soft-touch dynamic deformations

It is crucial for the users to touch, grasp and manipulate the interested objects through our sense of touch in many interactive applications, such as on-line computer games, interactive cartoon design, and virtual prototyping. In this paper, we propose an interactive haptic deformation approach which incorporates the dynamic simulation of mass–spring systems and flexible control of free-form deformation in the touch-enabled soft-object deformation. Through distributing mass, spring and damping coefficients of the object to the bounded Bezier volume lattice, the deformation of the object related to the haptic avatar follows the physical laws and has high working rate. Both homogenous and inhomogenous materials are simulated. The anchor nodes of haptic input are specified to create amazing special effects during the interactive haptic deformation. Interactive haptic deformations of three-type tropic fishes, Angel, Demekin, and GuppyBlueGrass, have been experimented to simulate vivid fish swimming processes in the virtual ocean scene. Our proposed approach provides touch-enabled input and efficient performance in the flexible deforming controls, letting the objects move in a dynamic, cartoon-style deforming manner. Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.