Real time graphics is quickly catching up to offline CG.

A new technology called physically based animation is one of the show-stoppers at this year’s Real Time Live! showcase at Siggraph 2015 in Los Angeles. The annual event specifically celebrates the latest achievements in real-time graphics “at the intersection of genius technical skills and creative beauty,” says event chair Nicolas Gonzalez.

Physically based animation explores the simulation of physically plausible behaviors at interactive rates. Advances in physically based animation are often motivated by the need to include complex, physically inspired behaviors in video games, interactive simulations, and movies.

Demonstrations at this year’s Real Time Live! include:

Kite
Gavin Moran and Nick Penwarden, Epic Games

“Kite” is an animated short film that Epic Games created to show off new features of the Unreal Engine. It runs completely in real time at 30fps. It is set in a realistic open-world area measuring 100 square miles.

Balloon Burst
Miles Macklin, Nuttapong Chentanez, Matthias Mueller and Tae-Yong Kim, Nvidia Corporation

This demo shows, for the first time, a large-scale simulation of water interacting with a thin elastic surface in real time. It simulates 250K particles representing the objects and 512K spray particles with the Nvidia unified solver Flex and uses ray-marching to render the water surface.

Fast Teeth Scanning for Advanced Digital Dentistry
Peter Jensen, Peter Dahl Ejby Jensen, Michael Bing, Jens Christian Jørgensen, Sverker Rasmuson, Lene Lillemark, Morten Ryde Holm-Hansen and Henrik Öjelund, 3Shape A/S

Demonstration of a real-time interactive 3D system for scanning teeth, which is capable of scanning reflective and semi-translucent materials with micron-level resolution and high accuracy.