DMM and Adaptive Tesselation

[WhiteDragon103]

Yo.

I had a query about the limitations and strengths of the DMM physics system.

My main interest is knowing if DMM is capable of deforming or fracturing materials from any location on the mesh, or just from the points created when a mesh is converted to DMM, as shown here:

http://www.pixelux.ch/content/view/29/44/

Say if I was to take a single DMM primitive(a tetrahedron, I am guessing), and shoot a bullet at it in the simulation. Will DMM be able to retessellate the object and create a bullethole, for instance, with all the appropriate cracks and dents? Or will it just push back the face where the bullet made contact with no added geometry?

Thanks.

[dmmjedi]

The way DMM deforms and transforms materials is based on the mesh used to represent the object. To answer your specific question though, the bullet would not create new geometry, only stress and break the tetrahedrons in the area of impact. You can always increase the tessellation in those regions to increase the detail.

One way to do what you mention is to use a technique called "tet splitting" where you break tets as needed. We have experimented with this technique and it can get good results, but it still requires work to be made viable.