Rather than sharing a blog post about a cool thing, why don't we share the cool thing directly?<p>The video is at <a href="http://vimeo.com/13457383" rel="nofollow">http://vimeo.com/13457383</a> - you can get to this page by simply clicking the Vimeo logo on the embedded clip. From here, you can click on Thiago Costa's profile <a href="http://vimeo.com/thiagocosta/" rel="nofollow">http://vimeo.com/thiagocosta/</a> and have a look at all of his 48 videos, and find a link to his website (which looks pretty interesting): <a href="http://thiagocosta.net/" rel="nofollow">http://thiagocosta.net/</a><p>The CrunchGear article doesn't really add anything, other than a layer of indirection.<p>Having said that, the video is awesome and thanks for sharing :)
If you like physics simulations, there were some very cool papers at this year's SIGGRAPH:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMsc48e41AQ" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMsc48e41AQ</a> (A Practical Simulation of Dispersed Bubble Flow)<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyfB_vQHMAo" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyfB_vQHMAo</a> (Physics-Inspired Topology Changes for Thin Fluid Features)<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Who8EpbvCY" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Who8EpbvCY</a> (A Multiscale Approach to Mesh-based Surface Tension Flows)<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHH8N_lNZzI" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHH8N_lNZzI</a> (Rigid-Body Fracture Sound)<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx80u6hJT6o" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx80u6hJT6o</a> (Efficient Yarn-based Cloth with Adaptive Contact Linearization)
Interesting... but not all that amazing, really. There's a rather glaring error, repeated many times, which many engines suffer from. Twitchy, spontaneous motion:<p>1) at ~23 seconds, look at the top-1/3, left-1/4 location. Chunks of particles <i>literally</i> spontaneously accelerate towards each other. Towards the top-most corner of the top platform, there's even a little snake-like thing that starts inch-worming around for no apparent reason, and a blob that leaps into the air at <i>far</i> higher velocity than it is made of.<p>2) with the 8-second cloth clip, note the twitching as the cloths try to find a stable resting point. Remind you of stacked objects in the Source engine[1], perhaps? Jump on top of them and it's like walking on an earthquake.<p>3) note how long the left block at ~2:40 takes to settle (almost, it doesn't actually), and the weird thrown-on-top chunk that twitches up and down a couple times, and then gets a burst of energy right when it starts fading out, moving <i>up</i>, and <i>faster</i> than the pieces it's touching, and without any visible ripple which could account for it.<p>If it's done by <i>one person</i> (Thiago Costa?), yes, very impressive job, that's a <i>lot</i> of work. But overall... more of the same.<p>---<p>[1]: chosen only because it's a relatively modern engine, and one many are familiar with.
The article seems to have the wrong idea about what that engine is.<p>While impressive, it was developed using ICE - a rendering package addon for Softimage, and is probably not able to be calculated in anything remotely resembling real-time.<p>So no, you won't be able to tell what religion Kratos is unless it's during a cutscene.
If this isn't real time, then this isn't that impressive. This type of fluid rendering has been possible for almost a decade:<p><a href="http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/water-sg02/" rel="nofollow">http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/water-sg02/</a><p>That said, if it is realtime, then yay.
Anyone out there from Pixar? How does this compare to what you guys have? I still gape at The Incredibles, especially the fine hair animation. But what I saw in the demo here of the cloth looks like something Pixar would want to have. Let me caution everyone, however, I haven't seen UP!, so perhaps Pixar has this or surprassed it.
Funny, this reminds me of all those old 2d mass-spring engines. I believe there was a cool one like asteroid where you could shear off one of your engines making your ship spin around. It was open source too. Can't remember the name.<p>EDIT:
Ah, found it: <a href="http://www.alecrivers.com/physical/overview_physics.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.alecrivers.com/physical/overview_physics.htm</a><p>There is even a older one that was an form-based application for windows where you could edit particles and connections. Pretty fun.
Pretty incredible! Now I'd love to see them take high quality video inside/outside a demolition of a building and compare that to the simulator. For video games and such though, this would be incredible already. Is this sort of engine used to design cars and such?
This stuff always has a warm and fuzzy feeling to it, but imagine the pain of implementing a full game with such physic effects, setting all the particles...
Man, I am so proud to be a Montrealer right now. This is an amazing example of the Creativity + Talent + Technology = Innovation that exemplifies this city.<p>Vive le Montréal! Oh and kudos to Thiago Costa. This is just awesome!