CREATING mayhem and destruction is not as simple as you might think for
computer animators and special effects technicians. Now researchers at Georgia
Tech have developed a more realistic model of how things smash.
James O鈥橞rien, a graduate student in computer science at the Georgia
Institute of Technology, Atlanta, studied the complex laws governing smashed
objects and devised a program that takes into account the stress applied to an
object, figures out where cracks will form, and determines the direction in
which they will spread.
The three-dimensional objects that are smashed up in computers are composed
of four-sided blocks, or tetrahedra. In other methods, cracks form only at
junctions between these shapes, which gives shattered objects a 鈥渂locky鈥� look.
O鈥橞rien鈥檚 method lets cracks spread not only between blocks, but also within
each block, producing much more realistic shards and edges.
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The model is simple to implement, says O鈥橞rien. But because it takes time to
create the images, the technology is more suited to movie special effects than
real-time applications such as computer games.