“Stabilizing Impossible Collisions with Loki” by Zhai, Schweickart, Haryono, Ilinov and Merlo – ACM SIGGRAPH HISTORY ARCHIVES

“Stabilizing Impossible Collisions with Loki” by Zhai, Schweickart, Haryono, Ilinov and Merlo

  • 2025 Talks_Zhai_Stabilizing Impossible Collisions with Loki

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Title:

    Stabilizing Impossible Collisions with Loki

Session/Category Title:

    Emotions, Explosions, and Epic Simulations

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Abstract:


    We present a suite of techniques from our in-house simulation framework, Loki, addressing the pervasive challenge of collision instabilities in character effects, particularly in cases where nonphysical pinching prevents collision resolution. We introduce a proximity-tolerant mode for contact projection that trades collision residual for stability, a compliant kinematic mechanism for on-demand gap expansion, and contact-aware strain limiting to prevent penetrations while enforcing target edge lengths. Additionally, we showcase our tools for collider management, including hierarchical collision exclusion, one-sided collision handling, and paintable collision thickness maps. These techniques collectively demonstrate a robust and intuitive workflow for combining physically based collisions with challenging production animations.

References:


    [1] Steve Lesser, Alexey Stomakhin, Gilles Daviet, Joel Wretborn, John Edholm, Noh-Hoon Lee, Eston Schweickart, Xiao Zhai, Sean Flynn, and Andrew Moffat. 2022. Loki: A Unified Multiphysics Simulation Framework for Production. ACM Trans. Graph. 41, 4, Article 50 (jul 2022), 20 pages.
    [2] Minchen Li, Danny M. Kaufman, and Chenfanfu Jiang. 2021. Codimensional incremental potential contact. ACM Trans. Graph. 40, 4, Article 170 (July 2021), 24 pages.


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