Milestone

Jello, again!

Important Links

Accomplishments

For our project, we chose to learn Unity due to its popularity, capabilities in physical simulation and rendering, and potential need for efficiency.

So far, we’ve implemented a Jello simulation using a mass-spring model. The model creates a 3D grid with masses at each vertex and springs connecting the masses. We chose the springs (structural, bending, and shearing) by extrapolating the structure of our cloth simulation. Afterwards, we implemented the mesh generation for this model, which creates a triangle mesh from the masses’ vertices.

Then, we worked with Unity to take our mesh and render it to look like Jello. This took some experimenting with the Unity materials and rendering pipelines.

Preliminary Results

Here’s the current state of our simulation and rendering! We added in a listener for keypresses which makes the Jello jump upwards.

Reflection

Overall, we thought that our model works well, but there’s a couple of issues with the model and our rendering that we’d want to improve on for our final submission.

The mass-spring model can be unstable at times, especially when high forces are exerted
Our render isn’t as transparent and realistic as we’d like

Also, our goal is to eventually try using a material point method or other more complicated method to render the Jello and support collisions with rigid bodies. For example, we want to simulate a bullet striking through the Jello cube.

Next Steps

Thoughts on next steps: google docs