Simulating soft-bodied swimmers with particle-based physics

In swimming virtual creatures, there is often a disparity between the level of detail in simulating a swimmer’s body and that of the fluid it moves in. In order to address this disparity, we have developed a new approach to modelling swimming virtual creatures using pseudo-soft bodies and particle-based fluids, which has sufficient realism to investigate a larger range of body-environment interactions than are usually included. As this comes with increased computational costs, which may be severe, we have also developed a means of reducing the volume of fluid that must be simulated.