A Practical Model for Realistic Butterfly Flight Simulation

 

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Will be presented at Siggraph'2022), 2022, 41(3): Article No.: 31.

Qiang Chen,  Tingsong Lu, Yang Tong, Guoliang Luo, Xiaogang Jin, Zhigang Deng

The pipeline of our approach. First, we construct a butterfly mesh model rigged with a hierarchical skeleton. Then, based on the aerodynamics force and the vortex force, we compute the inherent noisy behavior and rapidly-adjusted body motion. Finally, we use an efficient maneuvering control method through motion decoupling to generate butterfly body motion and trajectories.

Abstract

As one of ubiquitous insects on the earth, butterflies are also widely-known for inspiring thrill resonance with their elegant and peculiar flights. However, realistically modeling and simulating butterfly flights, in particular, for real-time graphics and animation applications, remains an under-explored problem. In this paper we propose an efficient and practical model to simulate butterfly flights. Specifically, we first model a butterfly with parametric maneuvering functions, including wing-abdomen interaction. Then, we simulate dynamic maneuvering control of the butterfly through our force based model that includes both the aerodynamics force and the vortex force. Through many simulation experiments and comparisons, we demonstrate that our method can efficiently simulate realistic butterfly flight motions in various real-world settings.

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