Breaking Good: Fracture Modes for Realtime Destruction

TL;DR

This paper introduces fracture modes as natural ways objects break, enabling real-time, impact-dependent fracture pattern prediction without online simulation, improving realism and efficiency.

Contribution

It formulates a novel eigenvalue-based approach to precompute fracture modes, allowing real-time impact prediction and enhanced realism in fracture simulations.

Findings

Precomputed fracture modes enable real-time impact prediction.

The method improves realism over traditional crack propagation models.

Applicable across diverse objects and impact scenarios.

Abstract

Drawing a direct analogy with the well-studied vibration or elastic modes, we introduce an object's fracture modes, which constitute its preferred or most natural ways of breaking. We formulate a sparsified eigenvalue problem, which we solve iteratively to obtain the n lowest-energy modes. These can be precomputed for a given shape to obtain a prefracture pattern that can substitute the state of the art for realtime applications at no runtime cost but significantly greater realism. Furthermore, any realtime impact can be projected onto our modes to obtain impact-dependent fracture patterns without the need for any online crack propagation simulation. We not only introduce this theoretically novel concept, but also show its fundamental and practical superiority in a diverse set of examples and contexts.