AbstractWe present a novel method to simulate complex bending and twisting of elastic rods. Elastic rods are commonly simulated using force based methods, such as the finite element method. These methods are accurate, but do not directly fit into the more efficient position-based dynamics framework, since the definition of material frames are not entirely based on positions. We introduce ghost points, which are additional points defined on edges, to naturally endow continuous material frames on discretized rods. We achieve robustness by a novel discretization of the Cosserat theory. The method supports coupling with a frame, a triangle, and a rigid body at the rod’s end point. Our formulation is highly efficient, capable of simulating hundreds of strands in real-time.

Download publication

Related Resources

See what’s new.

Article

2023

How to Future at Autodesk

Exploring “How to Future” through the lens of Strategic Foresight…

Publication

2018

ElectroTutor: Test-Driven Physical Computing Tutorials

A wide variety of tools for creating physical computing systems have…

Publication

2009

Mathematical modeling and synthetic biology

Synthetic biology is an engineering discipline that builds on our…

Get in touch

Something pique your interest? Get in touch if you’d like to learn more about Autodesk Research, our projects, people, and potential collaboration opportunities.

Contact us