A survey on position-based simulation methods in computer graphics

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.