Embedding hierachical deformation within a realtime scene graph

Scene graphs are widely used as a description of spatial relations between objects in a scene. Current scene graphs use linear transformations for this purpose. This limits the relation of two objects in the hierarchy to simple transformations like sheer, translation, rotation and scaling. In contrast to this, we want to represent and control deformations that result from propagating the dynamics of objects to deformable attached objects. Our solution is to replace the linear 4x4 matrix-based transformation of a scene graph by a more generic trilinear transformation. The linear transformation allows the composition of the transformation hierarchy into one transformation. Our approach additionally allows the handling of deformations on the same level. Building on this concept we present a system capable of real-time rendering. The computations of the applied deformations of the scene graph are performed in real-time on the GPU. We allow the approximation of arbitrary nonlinear transformations and deformations by utilising grids of trilinear transformations in our system. As an application we show geometric attachments on deformable objects and their deformation on a scene graph level.