A ROBUST AND MULTI-SCALE MODAL ANALYSIS

This paper presents a new approach to modal synthesis for ren- dering sounds of virtual objects. We propose a generic method for modal analysis that preserves sound variety across the surface of an object, at different scales of resolution and for a variety of com- plex geometries. The technique performs automatic voxelization of a surface model and automatic tuning of the parameters of hexa- hedral finite elements, based on the distribution of material in each cell. The voxelization is performed with a multi-resolution octree, which easily permits the construction of plausible lower resolution approximations of the modal model. With our approach, we can compute the audible impulse response of a variety of objects. Our solution is robust and can handle non-manifold geometries that include both volumetric and surface parts, such as those used in virtual environments.