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IPC

Incremental Potential Contact (IPC) is for robust and accurate time stepping of nonlinear elastodynamics. IPC guarantees intersection- and inversion-free trajectories regardless of materials, time-step sizes, velocities, or deformation severity.

Install / Use

/learn @ipc-sim/IPC

README

Build License

IPC

This is the opensource reference implementation of the SIGGRAPH 2020 paper Incremental Potential Contact: Intersection- and Inversion-free Large Deformation Dynamics.

Files

  • src/: source code

  • cmake/ and CMakeLists.txt: CMake files

  • Format/: automatic code formatting (requires clang-format)

  • input/: input data and scripts needed to rerun all examples in our paper, together with some tutorial examples

  • output/: output data (will be created)

  • tests/: unit-tests

  • tools/: Python and Bash scripts for generating and processing results

  • wiki/: images used in Github wiki page

  • build.py: a python script to automatically build IPC with default compiler

  • batch.py: a python script to automatically run a batch of examples (in input/n/ by default) with n threads for each linear solver in the program

  • batch_tetgen.py: a python script to automatically tetrahedralize a batch of closed surface meshes using Tetgen

Build

You can either use python build.py or

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
make -j4

gcc 7 or later is recommended.

Dependencies

Optional Dependencies

  • SuiteSparse: must be installed at a system level
    • Specifically IPC requires CHOLMOD, AMD, CAMD, CCOLAMD, and COLAMD which are all part of SuiteSparse and METIS which is sometimes a separate library
    • Enabled by default, and it can be disabled using the CMake argument -DIPC_WITH_CHOLMOD=OFF
    • Use of the CHOLMOD linear system solver is highly recommended as it is significantly faster than the alternative solvers provided (Eigen and AMGCL).
    • macOS: brew install suite-sparse
      • Alternatively, you can build SuiteSparse and then copy all files under SuiteSparse/include and SuiteSparse/lib to /usr/local/include and /usr/local/lib respectively.
    • Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install libsuitesparse-dev libmetis-dev
      • For program efficiency, we strongly recommend compiling SuiteSparse using Intel MKL LAPACK and BLAS (on an Intel machine): make library BLAS='-lmkl_intel_lp64 -lmkl_core -lmkl_intel_thread -lpthread -lm -lmkl_blas95_lp64 -liomp5' LAPACK='-lmkl_lapack95_lp64' -j 8
    • IPC also supports using Eigen or AMGCL as linear solver, which can be set via IPC_LINSYSSOLVER in CMakeLists.txt. To use custom linear solvers, you can implement a new interface (subclass) to our LinSysSolver class.
  • AMGCL: downloaded and built through CMake
    • Enabled by default, and it can be disabled using the CMake argument -DIPC_WITH_AMGCL=OFF
  • Catch2: downloaded and built through CMake
    • Used for unit-tests.
    • Enabled by default iff IPC is being built as the top-level project.
<!-- * [GMP LIB](https://gmplib.org/): `sudo apt install libgmp-dev` on Ubuntu. -->

Without OpenGL

If your system does not have the required OpenGL libraries, you can disable the viewer using the CMake argument -DIPC_WITH_OPENGL=OFF. It is important to then run IPC in offline mode (see below).

2D?

IPC is only implemented for 3D simulation.

HPC

If your system uses Slurm like our cluster does, then you can take advantage of our scripts to build IPC as a batch job.

From the IPC root directory use sbatch build.sh to compile IPC via a batch job. You can check the status of the job using squeue -u $USER -n IPC_build.

It is important to not build on the login node because while it supports AVX2, the compute nodes may not. Building on the login node will enable AVX2 support which may cause an Illegal instruction error when run on a compute node. Alternatively, this can be fixed by using Intel's compilers, icc and icpc, with the flag -axCORE-AVX2. This enables executables to run on compute nodes with or without AVX2 instructions. If the compute nodes support AVX2 instructions, executables will run AVX2 instructions, otherwise it will use other available instructions such as AVX or SSE4.2.

Sub-Projects

IPC contains two optional sub-projects for unit tests, debug, and file processing. To enable them use the CMake flag -DIPC_BUILD_<sub-project-name>_PROJECT=On where sub-project-name is the name of the sub-project (e.g. DIAGNOSTIC or MESH_PROCESSING). You can also set these interactively using ccmake.

Run

Please see our quick start guide for a hello world example with various settings. The output of each script will be saved into a separate folder in output/.

Offline Mode

It is possible to run IPC with and without the viewer. By default, the batch.py script runs IPC with the viewer. If you provide the argument --offline to batch.py then it will run IPC in offline mode (i.e. without the viewer).

If you are running the IPC_bin executable directly then the first argument controls the mode. Mode 10 runs IPC with the viewer and is the default in the batch.py. Mode 100 runs IPC in offline mode (without the viewer). See IPC_bin --help for more detail.

HPC

From the IPC root directory use sbatch run.sh to processes all the input files in input/12/ using 12 CPU cores.

This will process all input scenes in series. I am currently, working on a script to process all scenes in parallel via separate batch jobs.

Sub-Projects

The executables for the sub-projects are placed in their respective directory in src/Projects/.

Output Files

  • <n>.obj: surface mesh of the simulated objects and volumetric/surface kinematic collision objects in n-th time step
  • n.seg: mesh file of the segment kinematic collision objects if any in n-th time step
  • pt<n>.obj: vertex coordinates of the point cloud kinematic collision objects if any in n-th time step
  • status<n>: saved information of n-th time step that can be used to restart simulation from
  • ACO<m>_<n>.obj: mesh file of m-th analytical plane if any in n-th (and the following if unchanged) time steps
  • BC_<n>.txt: node index of Dirichlet nodes if any in n-th (and the following if unchanged) time steps
  • 0.png: snapshot of initial time step
  • finalResult.png: snapshot of last time step
  • finalResult_mesh.msh: rest shape of simulated object
  • anim.gif: animation preview of the simulation
  • config.txt: the config file containing all simulation settings that can be used to rerun the simulation
  • iterStats.txt: simulation/optimization statistics of each iteration
  • info.txt: timing information
  • log.txt: debug information
  • sysE.txt: total energy (kinematic, gravity, and elasticity) of each simulated object
  • sysL.txt: linear momentum of each simulated object
  • sysM.txt: angular momentum of each simulated object

Script Settings

See our quick start guide for detailed examples of minimal settings needed for a simulation.

  • energy {FCR | NH}
    • NH: Neo-Hookean elasticity energy (default)
    • FCR: Fixed Co-rotational elasticity energy
  • timeIntegration {BE | NM} <β> <γ>
    • BE: Backward Euler (default)
    • NM: Newmark (optional: add β and γ to change from default of 0.25 and 0.5)
  • dampingStiff <dampingStiff>
    • add lagged Rayleigh damping with stiffness dampingStiff or not if dampingStiff is zero or not specified
    • dampingStiff must be greater than or equal to zero
  • dampingRatio <dampingRatio>
    • set dampingStiff to be 0.75 * dampingRatio * h^3 or 0 if dampingRatio is zero or not specified
    • dampingRatio must be greater than or equal to zero
  • time <num-seconds> <time-step>
    • total time in seconds, 5 by default
    • time-step, h, in seconds, 0.025 by default
  • density <density>
    • density of the mesh in Kg/m³, 1000 by default
  • stiffness <young-modulus> <poisson-ratio>
    • Young's modulus (E) in Pa, 1e5 by default
    • Poisson's ratio (ν), 0.4 by default
  • turnOffGravity
    • no gravity if specified
  • shapes input <num-of-shapes>
    • number of input shapes followed by that number of lines specifying the shape paths and initial configuration in model coordinates:
    • <mesh-file-path> <x> <y> <z> <rot-deg-x> <rot-deg-y> <rot-deg-z> <scale-x> <scale-y> <scale-z> <extra-command> ...
    • <extra-command>: assigning different materials, initial velocities, boundary conditions, or scripted motions for each shape individually if any
      • material <density> <young-modulus> <poisson-ratio>
      • initVel <lvx> <lvy> <lvz> <avx> <avy> <avz>
      • `DBC <left-bottom-back-x> <left-bottom-back-y> <left-bottom-back-z> <right-top-front-x> <right-top-front-y> <right-top-front-z>

Related Skills

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GitHub Stars669
CategoryDevelopment
Updated3d ago
Forks83

Languages

C++

Security Score

100/100

Audited on Mar 23, 2026

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