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Item Using the Discrete Fourier Transform for Character Motion Blending and Manipulation - a Streamlined Approach(The Eurographics Association, 2010) Molnos, Michael R. L.; Laycock, Stephen D.; Day, Andy M.; John Collomosse and Ian GrimsteadMotion capture data allows natural-looking motion to be bestowed upon simulated characters. Research has sought ways of extending the range of motions it can reproduce. One such method involves blending between captured sequences in the frequency domain. This paper streamlines the approach taken by similar previous work. Higher efficiency is obtained both by shifting computations from runtime to pre-processing and by using a simpler technique, which is also more flexible allowing the method to be used for a greater range of motions. Furthermore, the already-known use of a triangular network defining a continuous blending space is instead presented as an adjustable interface element which is both intuitive and more flexible than applied to earlier work. As before input data may be sparse yet still allows the creation of a continuous spectrum of subtly varying motions, enabling characters to integrate well in their environment. Weighting calculation, blending and Fourier synthesis of realistic-looking motion using five harmonics requires 0.39 ?s per degree of freedom for each frame in the created sequence - a one-off cost incurred only when blending ratios change. This figure can be improved further using the proposed level-of-detail adjustments, which, combined with its small memory footprint, makes the method particularly suitable for the simulation of crowds.Item An Edge-based Approach to Adaptively Refining a Mesh for Cloth Deformation(The Eurographics Association, 2009) Simnett, Timothy J. R.; Laycock, Stephen D.; Day, Andy M.; Wen Tang and John CollomosseSimulating cloth in real-time is a challenging endeavour due to the number of triangles necessary to depict the potentially frequent changes in curvature, in combination with the physics calculations which model the deformations. To alleviate the costs, adaptive methods are often employed to refine the mesh in areas of high curvature, however, they do not often consider a decimation or coarsening of areas which were refined previously. In addition to this, the triangulation and consistency checks required to maintain a continuous mesh can be prohibitively time consuming when attempting to simulate larger pieces of cloth. In this paper we present an efficient edge-based approach to adaptively refine and coarsen a dynamic mesh, with the aim to exploit the varied nature of cloth by trading the level of detail in flat parts for increased detail in the curved regions of the cloth. An edge-based approach enables fast incremental refinement and coarsening, whereby only two triangles need updating on each split or join of an edge. The criteria for refinement includes curvature, edge length and edge collisions. Simple collision detection is performed allowing interactions between the cloth and the other objects in the environment.Item Real-Time Traffic Simulation Using Cellular Automata(The Eurographics Association, 2010) Applegate, Christopher S.; Laycock, Stephen D.; Day, Andy M.; John Collomosse and Ian GrimsteadIn this paper, we present a method to simulate large-scale traffic networks, at real-time frame-rates. Our novel contributions include a method to automatically generate a road graph from real-life data, and our extension to a discrete traffic model, which we use to simulate traffic, demonstrating continuous vehicle motion between discrete locations. Given Ordnance Survey data, we automatically generate a road graph, identifying roads, junctions, and their connections. We distribute cells at regular intervals throughout the graph, which are used as discrete vehicle locations in our traffic model. Vehicle positions are then interpolated between cells to obtain continuous animation. We test the performance of our model using a 500 x 500m2 area of a real city, and demonstrate that our model can simulate over 600 vehicles at real-time frame-rates (greater than 80 percent network density).Item Remodelling of Botanical Trees for Real-Time Simulation(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Reynolds, Daniel T.; Laycock, Stephen D.; Day, Andy M.; Ian Grimstead and Hamish CarrThis paper proposes a technique to use virtual trees created with an industry recognised modelling tool. Initially the skeletal structure is extracted and processed to generate a continuous mesh suitable for high quality, real-time rendering and simulation. Utilising the inherent hierarchical structure of botanical trees, the bone system is calculated from existing, low quality geometry. Once an ordered skeleton is available, a low resolution surface is created around the form as a single continuous mesh providing smooth, continuous connections where branches diverge, avoiding artefacts introduced by overlaid surfaces. Creation of the vertices relative to the skeletal structure ensures no miss-classification in assigning bone influence, allowing for realistic animation and effective mesh refinement introduced dynamically using GPU based techniques.Item A Distance Hierarchy to Detect Collisions Between Deformable Objects(The Eurographics Association, 2007) Madera, Francisco A.; Day, Andy M.; Laycock, Stephen D.; Ik Soo Lim and David DuceTo detect collisions between deformable objects we introduce an algorithm that computes the closest distances between certain feature points defined in their meshes. The strategy is to divide the objects into regions and to define a representative vertex that serves to compute the distance to the regions of the other objects. Having obtained the closest regions between two objects, we proceed to explore these regions by expanding them and detecting the closest sub-regions. We handle a hierarchy of regions and distances where the first level contains n1 regions, each one is divided into n2 sub-regions, and so on. A collision is obtained when the distance between two vertices in the last level of the tree is less than a predefined value e. The advantage of our algorithm is that we can follow the deformation of the surface with the representative vertices defined in the hierarchy.