A layered approach to deformable modeling and animation

Our approach integrates three mechanisms needed to model and animate deformable objects: controlling mechanisms, geometric surface deformation, and mesh refinement. Most approaches focus either modeling the physically correct behavior or alternative representations for deformable models. This results in a set of method specific algorithms that best represents a particular class of deformable objects. By encapsulating each process, our system introduces the interface that allows one to integrate existing controllers in a modular fashion. We demonstrate this in our system by instantiating a hardware accelerated free form deformation for geometric deformation and midpoint subdivision for mesh refinement. Finally, we discuss the available options for the controlling mechanisms and show how this approach leads to a generalizable framework.