CONSTRAINT SCHEMES FOR COMPUTER SIMULATION OF CLOTH AND OTHER MATERIALS

Constraint schemes for use in the computer simulation and animation of cloth, clothing and other materials helps to prevent clothing from excessive stretching, bunching up in unwanted areas, or “passing through” rigid objects during collisions. Several types of constraint systems are employed, including the use of skinned vertices as constraints and axial constraints. In these schemes cloth simulated vertices are generated for the material using a cloth simulation technique, and skinned vertices are generated for the material using a skin simulation technique. One or more of the cloth simulated vertices are compared to the corresponding skinned vertices. The cloth simulated vertices are modified if they deviate from the corresponding skinned vertices by more than a certain amount. Vertical constraints are also employed, which involve generating a first set of vertices for the material using a cloth simulation technique, comparing a vertical component of each of the first set of vertices to a lower limit for each of the first set of vertices, and for each vertical component that falls below the lower limit, modifying the vertical component to be equal to the lower limit.