1. Deformation of Terrain using Finite Element Modeling of Material Physics Andrew Maxwell Committee: Dr. Andrew Strelzoff, Dr. Tulio Sulbaran, Dr. Ray Seyfarth, Dr. Jian Chen, Dr. Ahmed Abukmail

2. Objective Obtain Feedback on topic for PhD Prospectus.

3. Agenda Problem Background Preliminary Study Difficulty of Problem Objective

4. Problem Many virtual environments have terrain that could achieve greater immersion through the addition of dynamic terrain deformation. There are techniques that are applied to other parts of physical objects that have not been used with the terrain specifically. ◦Simulating brick walls, cloth, wood, etc.

5. Terrain Deformation Common methods of modifying a virtual world terrain only move the vertices in the map of the terrain. This modifies the terrain, but usually either gives a hill or a bowl shape that loses realism. Fracture, Lucas Arts

6. FEM and DMM Finite Element Method ◦James F. O’Brien ◦Give physical properties to objects to simulate the substance it is trying to imitate. ◦Allows objects to break dynamically, depending on where it is hit. Digital Molecular Matter ◦Developed by Pixelux ◦A commercial engine that uses FEM. ◦Used as a plugin for Maya, 3Ds Max

7. DMM Star Wars: The Force Unleashed http://www.youtube.com/wat ch?v=Z734GXypSwk Pixelux Demo http://www.youtube.com/wat ch?v=7q_1t2LSLOE&feature=r elated

8. Difficulty of Problem How well does this scale for a large terrain? Switching physics model from within the virtual environment. ◦Building FEM into the Bullet Engine? ◦Modifying the existing environment to handle both engines.

9. Objective Restating the Problem ◦Current methodologies of deforming terrain looses realism and immersion. Step 1 ◦Determine whether to integrate FEM into Bullet or add to the physics server as a plugin. Step 2 ◦Test the scalability of the terrain Step 3 ◦Expand the capabilities of the system to other material properties.