Material Aware Mesh Deformations

We propose a novel approach to mesh deformation centered around material properties. Using these, we allow the user to achieve meaningful deformations easily with a small set of anchor triangles. Material properties, as defined here, are stiffness coefficients assigned to the mesh triangles and edges. We use these to describe the bending and shearing flexibility of the surface. By adjusting these coefficients, we provide fine continuous control over the resulting deformations. These material properties can be user-driven using a simple paint-like interface to define them, or data-driven, inferred from a sequence of sample poses. Also, a combination of the two, where the user can refine the resulting data-driven materials may be used to achieve more controlled results. As an alternative to skeleton based deformation methods, our method is both simpler and more powerful, allowing various degrees of stiffness along the surface without requiring a skeleton. Moreover, our method handles non-articulated models which are not suitable for skeleton deformations in a natural way. The formulation is simple, requiring only two linear systems whose coefficient matrices can be pre-inverted, thus allowing the algorithm to work at interactive rates on large models. The resulting deformations are as-rigid-as-possible, subject to the material properties, thus mesh details are well preserved as seen in our results.