
Algorithm to enhance low-res muscle mesh with high-res muscle mesh in real-time - flacle
http://www.visualacuity.nl/2016/02/a-scalable-geometrical-model-for-muscle.html
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austinjp
Very interesting. What are the ramifications for improving the understanding
of biomechanics? Does this allow for better investigation into the effects of
deformations such as compression, or muscles that are bent over pivot points?
Are cross-sectional areas easily available, and can these be used to determine
if muscle power is affected in certain situations eg the deformations
mentioned?

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flacle
Any improvement in biomechanics would have a lot of positive consequences as
the field has a lot of subfields. One example is soft body dynamics. Research
in this area is very active as computational power increases more accurate and
complex finite element simulations of soft tissues are possible. While the
classical model used in the paper, from Delp et al., already contains pivot
points, it lacks other important info. For instance, the tendon slack length
parameter currently includes both the length of the free tendon and the length
of the aponeurotic tendon. In reality most musculotendons consist of at least
one tendon on each side. AFAIK, no functional representation is available that
divides the tendon length into separate lengths for the origin and insertion
of each unit, and also into its two constituents, free and aponeurotic. And as
has been shown, deformation effects for muscles and tendon are indeed
different as they they have different material properties. Regarding the
cross-sectional areas, these are available, just not within the classical
models. If there is a need to incorporate cross-sectional area into a model
than the main issue is measure. Most models in biomechanics are created by
taking external measurements of subjects in vivo, but I guess it won't take
long before models go beyond piecewise line segments. Or soft body simulation
get cheap enough to reach the same level of accuracy present in these trial-
and-tested models.

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mentos
What are the applications for this?

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flacle
For this specific project/paper it's any application that would include real-
time computer animation with an underlying musculoskeletal framework.
Biomechanics scientists, clinicians can use it to improve the "visual" realism
of their bio-simulation tools, or video game developers and artists can use it
to increase the realism of game characters. The benefit here is that you can
let the model takes care of the biomechanics and it's output is used to deform
the muscle and tendon geometry in real-time. The number of vertices (or
resolution) of each muscle can also be adjusted to keep the minimum required
frame rate, in case you want dynamic skinning and everything else that needs
to be added into a complex scene.

