Christoph von Tycowicz

An efficient construction of reduced deformable objects

Many efficient computational methods for physical simulation are based on model reduction. We propose new model reduction techniques for the approximation of reduced forces and for the construction of reduced shape spaces of deformable objects that accelerate the construction of a reduced dynamical system, increase the accuracy of the approximation, and simplify the implementation of model reduction. Based on the techniques, we introduce schemes for real-time simulation of deformable objects and interactive deformation-based editing of triangle or tet meshes. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the new techniques in different experiments with elastic solids and shells and compare them to alternative approaches.

Animating deformable objects using sparse spacetime constraints

We propose a scheme for animating deformable objects based on spacetime optimization. The main feature is that it robustly and within a few seconds generates interesting motion from a sparse set of spacetime constraints. Providing only partial (as opposed to full) keyframes for positions and velocities is sufficient. The computed motion satisfies the constraints and the remaining degrees of freedom are determined by physical principles using elasticity and the spacetime constraints paradigm. Our modeling of the spacetime optimization problem combines dimensional reduction, modal coordinates, wiggly splines, and rotation strain warping. Our solver is based on a theorem that characterizes the solutions of the optimization problem and allows us to restrict the optimization to low-dimensional search spaces. This treatment of the optimization problem avoids a time discretization and the resulting method can robustly deal with sparse input and wiggly motion.

Interactive surface modeling using modal analysis

We propose a framework for deformation-based surface modeling that is interactive, robust, and intuitive to use. The deformations are described by a nonlinear optimization problem that models static states of elastic shapes under external forces which implement the user input. Interactive response is achieved by a combination of model reduction, a robust energy approximation, and an efficient quasi-Newton solver. Motivated by the observation that a typical modeling session requires only a fraction of the full shape space of the underlying model, we use second and third derivatives of a deformation energy to construct a low-dimensional shape space that forms the feasible set for the optimization. Based on mesh coarsening, we propose an energy approximation scheme with adjustable approximation quality. The quasi-Newton solver guarantees superlinear convergence without the need of costly Hessian evaluations during modeling. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach on different examples including the test suite introduced in Sorkine [2008].

Interactive spacetime control of deformable objects

Creating motions of objects or characters that are physically plausible and follow an animators intent is a key task in computer animation. The spacetime constraints paradigm is a valuable approach to this problem, but it suffers from high computational costs. Based on spacetime constraints, we propose a framework for controlling the motion of deformable objects that offers interactive response times. This is achieved by a model reduction of the underlying variational problem, which combines dimension reduction, multipoint linearization, and decoupling of ODEs. After a preprocess, the cost for creating or editing a motion is reduced to solving a number of one-dimensional spacetime problems, whose solutions are the wiggly splines introduced by Kass and Anderson [2008]. We achieve interactive response times through a new fast and robust numerical scheme for solving the one-dimensional problems that is based on a closed-form representation of the wiggly splines.

Modal shape analysis beyond Laplacian

In recent years, substantial progress in shape analysis has been achieved through methods that use the spectra and eigenfunctions of discrete Laplace operators. In this work, we study spectra and eigenfunctions of discrete differential operators that can serve as an alternative to the discrete Laplacians for applications in shape analysis. We construct such operators as the Hessians of surface energies, which operate on a function space on the surface, or of deformation energies, which operate on a shape space. In particular, we design a quadratic energy such that, on the one hand, its Hessian equals the Laplace operator if the surface is a part of the Euclidean plane, and, on the other hand, the Hessian eigenfunctions are sensitive to the extrinsic curvature (e.g. sharp bends) on curved surfaces. Furthermore, we consider eigenvibrations induced by deformation energies, and we derive a closed form representation for the Hessian (at the rest state of the energy) for a general class of deformation energies. Based on these spectra and eigenmodes, we derive two shape signatures. One that measures the similarity of points on a surface, and another that can be used to identify features of surfaces.

Eigenmodes of surface energies for shape analysis

In this work, we study the spectra and eigenmodes of the Hessian of various discrete surface energies and discuss applications to shape analysis. In particular, we consider a physical model that describes the vibration modes and frequencies of a surface through the eigenfunctions and eigenvalues of the Hessian of a deformation energy, and we derive a closed form representation for the Hessian (at the rest state of the energy) for a general class of deformation energies. Furthermore, we design a quadratic energy, such that the eigenmodes of the Hessian of this energy are sensitive to the extrinsic curvature of the surface. Based on these spectra and eigenmodes, we derive two shape signatures. One that measures the similarity of points on a surface, and another that can be used to identify features of the surface. In addition, we discuss a spectral quadrangulation scheme for surfaces.

Context‐Based Coding of Adaptive Multiresolution Meshes

Multiresolution meshes provide an efficient and structured representation of geometric objects. To increase the mesh resolution only at vital parts of the object, adaptive refinement is widely used. We propose a lossless compression scheme for these adaptive structures that exploits the parent–child relationships inherent to the mesh hierarchy. We use the rules that correspond to the adaptive refinement scheme and store bits only where some freedom of choice is left, leading to compact codes that are free of redundancy. Moreover, we extend the coder to sequences of meshes with varying refinement. The connectivity compression ratio of our method exceeds that of state‐of‐the‐art coders by a factor of 2–7. For efficient compression of vertex positions we adapt popular wavelet‐based coding schemes to the adaptive triangular and quadrangular cases to demonstrate the compatibility with our method. Akin to state‐of‐the‐art coders, we use a zerotree to encode the resulting coefficients. Using improved context modelling we enhanced the zerotree compression, cutting the overall geometry data rate by 7% below those of the successful Progressive Geometry Compression. More importantly, by exploiting the existing refinement structure we achieve compression factors that are four times greater than those of coders which can handle irregular meshes.

Geometric Flows of Curves in Shape Space for Processing Motion of Deformable Objects

We introduce techniques for the processing of motion and animations of non‐rigid shapes. The idea is to regard animations of deformable objects as curves in shape space. Then, we use the geometric structure on shape space to transfer concepts from curve processing in ℝn to the processing of motion of non‐rigid shapes. Following this principle, we introduce a discrete geometric flow for curves in shape space. The flow iteratively replaces every shape with a weighted average shape of a local neighborhood and thereby globally decreases an energy whose minimizers are discrete geodesics in shape space. Based on the flow, we devise a novel smoothing filter for motions and animations of deformable shapes. By shortening the length in shape space of an animation, it systematically regularizes the deformations between consecutive frames of the animation. The scheme can be used for smoothing and noise removal, e.g., for reducing jittering artifacts in motion capture data. We introduce a reduced‐order method for the computation of the flow. In addition to being efficient for the smoothing of curves, it is a novel scheme for computing geodesics in shape space. We use the scheme to construct non‐linear “Bézier curves” by executing de Casteljaus algorithm in shape space.

Lossless Compression of Adaptive Multiresolution Meshes

We present a novel coder for lossless compression of adaptive multiresolution meshes that exploits their special hierarchical structure. The heart of our method is a new progressive connectivity coder that can be combined with leading geometry encoding techniques. The compressor uses the parent/child relationships inherent to the hierarchical mesh. We use the rules that accord to the refinement scheme and store bits only where it leaves freedom of choice, leading to compact codes that are free of redundancy. To illustrate our scheme we chose the widespread red-green refinement, but the underlying concepts can be directly transferred to other adaptive refinement schemes as well. The compression ratio of our method exceeds that of state-of-the-art coders by a factor of 2 to 3 on most of our benchmark models.

Reducing Memory Requirements in Scientific Computing and Optimal Control

In high accuracy numerical simulations and optimal control of time-dependent processes, often both many timesteps and fine spatial discretizations are needed. Adjoint gradient computation, or post-processing of simulation results, requires the storage of the solution trajectories over the whole time, if necessary together with the adaptively refined spatial grids. In this paper we discuss various techniques to reduce the memory requirements, focusing first on the storage of the solution data, which are typically double precision floating point values. We highlight advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches. Moreover, we present an algorithm for the efficient storage of adaptively refined, hierarchic grids, and the integration with the compressed storage of solution data.