High-order elements in position-based dynamics

Bastien Saillant, Florence Zara, Guillaume Damiand, Fabrice Jaillet

Abstract: The simulation of deformable objects has been the subject of a great deal of work in the field of computer graphics. The constraint-based PBD (Position-Based Dynamics) approach has been proven to be effective in this field for real-time and stable deformable objects simulation. Finite element method with linear tetrahedron discretization is the most widely used in computer graphics despite producing less accurate results than hexahedral or higher-order elements. In this context, our proposal is to integrate higher degree elements within the pbd framework. In addition, we propose a solution to improve convergence of unstable energies (like Neo-Hooke) when used as constraints. We show that our approach improves accuracy compared to linear tetrahedra. We also highlight the time savings, since fewer elements are needed.