Precomputed acceleration noise for improved rigid-body sound

Abstract

We introduce an efficient method for synthesizing acceleration noise -- sound produced when an object experiences abrupt rigid-body acceleration due to collisions or other contact events. We approach this in two main steps. First, we estimate continuous contact force profiles from rigid-body impulses using a simple model based on Hertz contact theory. Next, we compute solutions to the acoustic wave equation due to short acceleration pulses in each rigid-body degree of freedom. We introduce an efficient representation for these solutions -- Precomputed Acceleration Noise -- which allows us to accurately estimate sound due to arbitrary rigid-body accelerations. We find that the addition of acceleration noise significantly complements the standard modal sound algorithm, especially for small objects.