9 Muscle Wrapping and Via Points

9.5 Alternate Wrapping Surfaces

Although it common to use the general mesh geometry of a RigidBody as the wrapping surface, situations may arise where it is desirable to not do this. These may include:

  • •

    The general mesh geometry is not sufficiently smooth to form a good wrapping surface;

  • •

    Wrapping around the default mesh geometry is not stable, in that it is too easy for the wrap strand to “slip off”;

  • •

    Using one of the simpler analytic geometries (Table 9.1) may result in a more efficient computation.

There are a couple of ways to handle this. One, discussed in Section 9.3, involves creating a collision mesh which is separate from the general mesh geometry. However, that same collision mesh must then also be used for collision handling (Chapter 8). If that is undesirable, or if multiple wrapping surfaces are needed, then a different approach may be used. This involves creating the desired wrappable as a separate object and then attaching it to the main RigidBody. Typically, this wrappable will be created with zero mass (or density), so that it does not alter the effective mass or inertia of the main body. The general procedure then becomes:

  1. 1.

    Create the main RigidBody with whatever desired geometry and inertia is needed;

  2. 2.

    Create the additional wrappable object(s), usually with zero density/mass;

  3. 3.

    Attach the wrappables to the main body using one of the MechModel attachFrame() methods described in Section 3.6.3.

9.5.1 Example: wrapping for a finger joint

Figure 9.12: PhalanxWrapping model loaded into ArtiSynth.

An example using an alternate wrapping surface is given by artisynth.demos.tutorial.PhalanxWrapping, which shows a a muscle wrapping around a joint between two finger bones. Because the bones themselves are fairly narrow, using them as wrapping surfaces would likely lead to the muscle slipping off. Instead, a RigidCylinder is used for the wrapping and attached to one of the bones. The code, with include directives excluded, is given below:

⬇
1 public class PhalanxWrapping extends RootModel {
2
3    private static Color BONE = new Color (1f, 1f, 0.8f);
4    private static double DTOR = Math.PI/180.0;
5
6    private RigidBody createBody (MechModel mech, String name, String fileName) {
7       // creates a bone from its mesh and adds it to a MechModel
8       String filePath = PathFinder.findSourceDir(this) + "/data/" + fileName;
9       RigidBody body = RigidBody.createFromMesh (
10          name, filePath, /*density=*/1000, /*scale=*/1.0);
11       mech.addRigidBody (body);
12       RenderProps.setFaceColor (body, BONE);
13       return body;
14    }
15
16    public void build (String[] args) {
17
18       MechModel mech = new MechModel ("mech");
19       addModel (mech);
20
21       // create the two phalanx bones, and offset them
22       RigidBody proximal = createBody (mech, "proximal", "HP3ProximalLeft.obj");
23       RigidBody distal = createBody (mech, "distal", "HP3MiddleLeft.obj");
24       distal.setPose (new RigidTransform3d (0.02500, 0.00094, -0.03979));
25
26       // make the proximal phalanx non dynamic; add damping to the distal
27       proximal.setDynamic (false);
28       distal.setFrameDamping (0.03);
29
30       // create a revolute joint between the bones
31       RigidTransform3d TJW =
32          new RigidTransform3d (0.018, 0, -0.022, 0, 0, -DTOR*90);
33       HingeJoint joint = new HingeJoint (proximal, distal, TJW);
34       joint.setShaftLength (0.02); // render joint as a blue cylinder
35       RenderProps.setFaceColor (joint, Color.BLUE);
36       mech.addBodyConnector (joint);
37
38       // create markers for muscle origin and insertion points
39       FrameMarker origin = mech.addFrameMarkerWorld (
40          proximal, new Point3d (0.0098, -0.0001, -0.0037));
41       FrameMarker insertion = mech.addFrameMarkerWorld (
42          distal, new Point3d (0.0293, 0.0009, -0.0415));
43
44       // create a massless RigidCylinder to use as a wrapping surface and
45       // attach it to the distal bone
46       RigidCylinder cylinder = new RigidCylinder (
47          "wrapSurface", /*rad=*/0.005, /*h=*/0.04, /*density=*/0, /*nsegs=*/32);
48       cylinder.setPose (TJW);
49       mech.addRigidBody (cylinder);
50       mech.attachFrame (cylinder, distal);
51
52       // create a wrappable muscle using a SimpleAxialMuscle material
53       MultiPointSpring muscle = new MultiPointMuscle ("muscle");
54       muscle.setMaterial (
55          new SimpleAxialMuscle (/*k=*/0.5, /*d=*/0, /*maxf=*/0.04));
56       muscle.addPoint (origin);
57       // add an initial point to the wrappable segment to make sure it wraps
58       // around the cylinder the right way
59       muscle.setSegmentWrappable (
60          50, new Point3d[] { new Point3d (0.025, 0.0, -0.02) });
61       muscle.addPoint (insertion);
62       muscle.addWrappable (cylinder);
63       muscle.updateWrapSegments(); // “shrink wrap” around cylinder
64       mech.addMultiPointSpring (muscle);
65
66       // set render properties
67       RenderProps.setSphericalPoints (mech, 0.002, Color.BLUE);
68       RenderProps.setCylindricalLines (muscle, 0.001, Color.RED);
69       RenderProps.setFaceColor (cylinder, new Color (200, 200, 230));
70    }
71 }

The method createBody() (lines 6-14) creates a rigid body from a geometry mesh stored in a file in the directory “data” beneath the source directory, using the utility class PathFinder used to determine the file path (Section 2.6).

Within the build() method, a MechModel is created containing two rigid bodies representing the bones, proximal and distal, with proximal fixed and distal free to move with a frame damping of 0.03 (lines 18-28). A cylindrical joint is then added between the bones, along with markers describing the muscle’s origin and insertion points (lines 31-42). A RigidCylinder is created to act as a wrapping obstacle and attached to the distal bone in the same location as the joint (lines 46-50); since it is created with a density of 0 it has no mass and hence does not affect the bone’s inertia. The muscle itself is created at lines 53-64, using a SimpleAxialMuscle as a material and an extra initial point specified to setSegmentWrappable() to ensure that it wraps around the cylinder in the correct way (Section 9.4). Finally, some render properties are set at lines 67-69.

To run this example in ArtiSynth, select All demos > tutorial > PhalanxWrapping from the Models menu. The model should load and initially appear as in Figure 9.12. When running the model, one can move the distal bone either by using the pull tool (Section “Pull Manipulation” in the ArtiSynth User Interface Guide), or selecting the muscle in the GUI, invoking a property dialog by choosing Edit properties ... from the right-click context menu, and adjusting the excitation property.

Bibliography