Simulation von Schnee
(2019)
Using physics simulations natural phenomena can be replicated
with the computer. The aim is to calculate a physical feature as correclty as
possible in order to draw conclusions for the real world. Fields of Application
are, for example, medicine, industry, but also games or films.
Snow is a very complex natural phenomenon due to its physical structure
and properties. To simulate snow, different material properties have to be
considered.
The most important method that deals with the simulation of snow and its
dynamics is the material point method. It combines the Lagrangian particles
based on continuum mechanics with a Cartesian grid. The grid enables
communication between the snow particles, which are not actually connected.
For calculation of particles data is transferred from these particles to
the grid nodes. There, calculations are carried out with information about
neighboring particles. The results are then transferred back to the original
particles. Using GPGPU techniques, physical simulations can be implemented
on the graphics card. Procedures like the material point method
can be parallelized well with these techniques.
This paper deals with the physical basics of the material point method and
implements them on the graphics card using compute shaders. Then performance
and quality are evaluated.
This thesis deals with the development of an authoring system for modeling 3D environments with physical description. In contrast to creating scenes in other common modeling tools, one can now compute and describe physical entities of a scene additional to the usual geometry. It is very important for those authoring systems to be extendable and customizable for specific requirement of the user. The focus lies on developing simple program architecture, which is easy to extend and to modify.