ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews research during the past few years by the author and collaborators researching the use of physical simulation for animating rigid and flexible bodies. Physical simulation has been explored both as an interactive tool for object manipulation and as a means to automatically generate complex motion for animation. Most work has centered around manipulating articulated rigid bodies. This report provides some background on modeling with physical simulation, and discusses dynamics formulations, control methodologies, and implementation of constraints and collisions. There is a discussion of the use of physical simulation for interactive manipulation of articulated bodies and a brief description of systems developed with this in mind. Finally, the author provides some discussion of the state of physical simulation and what lies ahead.
