Computational physics now underlies some of the most amazing and most routine of visual effects work, using numerical models to simulate reality and more on the computer. Natural-looking water, smoke, fire, and clothing effects in film are often handled best by understanding and solving the physics of how they move in nature. Making simulations efficient and artist-friendly remains a huge challenge.

Dr. Bridson will discuss both the general context of physics-based animation in graphics, but then focus particularly on the advent of new geometric and numerical algorithms for exploiting surface meshes in simulation - both the obvious like clothing and the more surprising like smoke.

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About the Speaker

Robert Bridson is an internationally-known researcher in computer graphics and numerical simulation methods. Currently an associate professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of British Columbia, he has made major contributions to the computer graphics field, including methods for fluid simulation, cloth animation, robust collision and contact, procedural animation, and surface tracking with meshes.

He co-developed Naiad and Squirt, two of the most influential fluid solvers in use in the film industry and has supplied a variety of other code and algorithms used on many of the biggest films in the last decade. He wrote the primary book on fluid simulation for graphics, and with research collaboration at studios such as Weta Digital and Double Negative has screen credits on films such as The Rise of the Planet of the Apes and The Adventures of Tin-Tin. He also co-founded Exotic Matter, a graphics software company, whose simulation technology was recently acquired by Autodesk.

Robert Bridson,
Associate Professor in the Imager and SCL labs,
UBC Computer Science,
Vancouver Canada

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