SIGGRAPH 2016 Poster, SIGGRAPH 2016, Anaheim, California, USA, 1 page, 24-28 July 2016.
Physics-based animation has become an important
tool in computer graphics and is essential in recreating realistic
looking natural phenomena. Researchers have been looking for tools
to control passive simulations that allow artists to easily modify
the simulation to best suit the artistic requirements. However,
fluid motion is very hard to predict and it is very difficult, if
not impossible, to achieve specific behavior just by altering the
global variables. Active control of the simulation will be
necessary to achieve this goal.
We present a model predictive controller (MPC) for fluid
simulations that is able to achieve control with high precision
based on an optimization process. The system has the potential to
be used to control fluid simulations at run-time to deal with
unforeseen user-interactions by controlling a simplified simulation
using a sliding window to anticipate future changes. MPC is already
being used extensively for controlling massive industrial
processes. Likewise, the graphics community has applied this
approach for generating bipedal locomotion. In the same vein, we
hope that our method will provide artists with a robust and
reliable tool to orchestrate complex simulations according to
artistic needs and helps to obtain physically-plausible simulations
with minimal effort.
