A Survey on Position‐Based Simulation Methods in Computer Graphics

Abstract

The dynamic simulation of mechanical effects has a long history in computer graphics. The classical methods in this field discretize Newton's second law in a variety of Lagrangian or Eulerian ways, and formulate forces appropriate for each mechanical effect: joints for rigid bodies; stretching, shearing or bending for deformable bodies and pressure, or viscosity for fluids, to mention just a few. In the last years, the class of position-based methods has become popular in the graphics community. These kinds of methods are fast, stable and controllable which make them well-suited for use in interactive environments. Position-based methods are not as accurate as force-based methods in general but they provide visual plausibility. Therefore, the main application areas of these approaches are virtual reality, computer games and special effects in movies. This state-of-the-art report covers the large variety of position-based methods that were developed in the field of physically based simulation. We will introduce the concept of position-based dynamics, present dynamic simulation based on shape matching and discuss data-driven upsampling approaches. Furthermore, we will present several applications for these methods.

Unified particle physics for real-time applications

“…We give some background on position-based dynamics here, but refer the reader to [Müller et al 2007] and [Bender et al 2014] for more information. PBD solves a system of non-linear equality and inequality constraints such that…”

Stable Neo-Hookean Flesh Simulation

“…Alternative deformation schemes such as position-based dynamics (Bender et al 2015;Umetani et al 2014) and projective dynamics (Bouaziz et al 2014) have recently emerged. One advantage of these schemes is that the Hessian…”

A new ChainMail approach for real-time soft tissue simulation

“…15 This position adjustment is derived based on the conditions of conservation of volume and energy. 16,17 …”