Abstract

We introduce structural feasibility into procedural modeling of buildings. This allows for more realistic structural models that can be interacted with in physical simulations. While existing structural analysis tools focus heavily on providing an analysis of the stress state, our proposed method automatically tunes a set of designated free parameters to obtain forms that are structurally sound.

Files

Paper PDF (4.5 MB)
Slides PPT (11.6 MB)

Video

Acknowledgments

Phillippe Siclait implemented the dynamics simulations in Bullet. Sylvain Paris and Yeuhi Abe provided helpful discussions. Jovan Popović suggested the use of procedural modeling. Thanks to reviewers of the MIT pre-deadline. This work was supported by funding from NSERC Canada and grants from the Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab. Thanks to Eugene Hsu for writing and producing the Fast Forward video.

BibTex 

@article{whiting:2009,
  author    = {Emily Whiting and John Ochsendorf and Fr{\'e}do Durand},
  title     = {Procedural Modeling of Structurally-Sound Masonry Buildings},
  journal   = {ACM Transactions on Graphics},
  volume    = {28},
  number    = {5},
  year      = {2009},
  pages     = {112},
}

Errata

Appendix: Vector v_{i,j} is not normalized. The length of v_{i,j} (distance between vertex i and the centroid of block j), is necessary to compute the correct torque contribution.

Emily Whiting
Last modified: Wed Mar 6 2013