Output details

Modelling deformations in car crash animation

Originality: The introduction of realistic vehicle crash dynamics in video games enriches the players’ experience, but the methods used are often overly simplified (and therefore often unrealistic). To our knowledge, this is the first significant work to address both the graphical fundamentals of car crash modelling and the design principles guiding animation production of crashes. This research satisfies the high computational efficiency needed for computer animation/games by minimising the computation burden and reducing the problem’s dimensions. This optimisation integrates the in-depth understanding of graphics design and provides a practical solution through the theoretical insight.

Significance: It provides a powerful design tool, reducing computing load as well as simplifying manual preparation, which helps to save cost in animation production. Our work is not only applicable to graphical applications, but the robust theoretical underpinnings give it utility in more “serious” applications, such as accident reconstruction and crash analysis.

Rigour: This development has been supported by a thorough review of existing literature on car crash animation and representative implementations in games. A prototype demonstrates the capacity of efficiently modelling and rendering damage in crash scenarios. We introduce a hybrid system architecture which separates the rigid body dynamics and deformation simulation to accelerate computation. Different cases have been examined to assure the final visual quality, demonstrating the efficacy of the proposed method.