Chris Lewin – Electronic Arts

Supervisors:
Prof Phil Willis
Dr Chris Williams

Industry Mentors:
Dr Tom Waterson
Dr Mike Bassett

Real-time Physics
My research concerns real-time simulation of interesting physics, above and beyond the rigid-body mechanics found in most games. While methods for deformable bodies and fluid simulation are well-developed and frequently used in the film industry, they are currently too slow and memory-hungry to be used in games. My project seeks to both speed up these methods and find simple yet plausible alternatives, making it possible to have more realistic interactions with simulated worlds.

I am currently working on a specialised model for building destruction. Buildings are a pathological case for standard deformation simulations, as they are sparse, heterogeneous and stiff, and thus they are usually not physically simulated, even for film effects. While they pose difficulty for general techniques, the specific mechanics of buildings have been studied for centuries in civil engineering, so by exploiting techniques from that field we should be able to construct a specific and efficient model of building deformation.