2020

MSc Projects 2020

MSc projects from 2020

Caoimhe McCarthy

This pproject demonstrates the generation of a Houdini Digital Asset for ivy growth. This procedural tool can generate a variety of different scenes based on user defined parameter values. The ivy is generated using a sort of particle based method first introduced in 1985 by Reeves and Blau (1985). Using this as the basis for the growth algorithm, the HDA also simulates external tropisms such as gravitropism and phototropism. Along with the ability to automatically generate ivy, this tool allows the user the more stylistic approach of drawing ivy directly onto the environment geometry. This highly art-directable procedural tool demonstrates an easy way to generate climbing ivy.

Di Yang

This is an implementation of the smoke fluid settlement based on the BiMocq2(2 levels of Bi-directional mapping of convective quantities) method to obtain a more detailed, more precise and stable fluid simulation. This implementation is done using houdini so that Houdini users can easily apply it in their daily work. This implementation is slightly different from the original paper. The order of the algorithm steps is slightly adjusted, and the final method of affecting the speed variable is changed to better fit Houdini's original smoke simulation.

Eimear Crotty

Vulkan is a low-level graphics and compute API which aims to provide users with faster draw speeds by removing overhead from the driver. The user is expected to explicitly provide the details previously generated by the driver. The resulting extra code can be difficult to understand and taxing to write for beginners, leading to the need for a helper library.

Han Dance

A custom MPM solver created in Houdini using mostly VEX and gas microsolver nodes. The ten step process presented in 'A material point method for snow simulation' is implemented. A tool to create custom snow scenes in Houdini using the solver is also provided.

Jack Beasley

This project developed a physics game toolkit, created in Unreal Engine. The toolkit combined both Blueprint scripting and C++ programming by prototyping new systems in Blueprints, then re-creating them in code for added efficiency. These code systems were then exposed to Blueprint in the form of key variables and functions. This created an interface for an end user to use the toolkit while also allowing for future expansion, entirely in Blueprint if desired. Finally, the finished toolkit has been showcased in the form of a demo puzzle, utilising all systems in the toolkit and displaying how they could work together to generate puzzles in a physics-based game.

Junheng Fang

This project implements the ODE-based C2 continuous surface creation technique to recreate two models in the same topology with different expressions. Besides, it blends the surface creation method with geometric and physics-based skin deformation approaches to show, (1)the advantages of the ODE-based surface creation technique,(2)the more realistic result of physics-based skin deformation approach,(3)the feasibility of blending this two approaches together