Dynamical simulation, in computational physics, is the simulation of systems of objects that are free to move, usually in three dimensions according to Newton's laws of dynamics, or approximations thereof. Dynamical simulation is used in computer animation to assist animators to produce realistic motion, in industrial design, and in video games. Body movement is calculated using time integration methods.
Havok is a middleware software suite developed by the Irish company Havok. Havok provides a physics engine component and related functions to video games.
Houdini is a 3D animation software application developed by SideFX, based in Toronto. SideFX adapted Houdini from the PRISMS suite of procedural generation software tools. Its exclusive attention to procedural generation distinguishes it from other 3D computer graphics software.
COLLADA is an interchange file format for interactive 3D applications. It is managed by the nonprofit technology consortium, the Khronos Group, and has been adopted by ISO as a publicly available specification, ISO/PAS 17506.
PhysX is an open-source realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by Nvidia as a part of Nvidia GameWorks software suite.
Autodesk Softimage, or simply Softimage is a discontinued 3D computer graphics application, for producing 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling, and computer animation. Now owned by Autodesk and formerly titled Softimage|XSI, the software has been predominantly used in the film, video game, and advertising industries for creating computer generated characters, objects, and environments.
The Blender Game Engine is a discontinued component of Blender, a free and open-source 3D production suite, used for making real-time interactive content. The game engine was written from scratch in C++ as a mostly independent component, and includes support for features such as Python scripting and OpenAL 3D sound.
Reactor is a physics engine from the Irish software company Havok for use in Autodesk 3ds Max.
Bullet is a physics engine which simulates collision detection, soft and rigid body dynamics. It has been used in video games as well as for visual effects in movies. Erwin Coumans, its main author, won a Scientific and Technical Academy Award for his work on Bullet. He worked for Sony Computer Entertainment US R&D from 2003 until 2010, for AMD until 2014, and he now works for Google.
Soft-body dynamics is a field of computer graphics that focuses on visually realistic physical simulations of the motion and properties of deformable objects. The applications are mostly in video games and films. Unlike in simulation of rigid bodies, the shape of soft bodies can change, meaning that the relative distance of two points on the object is not fixed. While the relative distances of points are not fixed, the body is expected to retain its shape to some degree. The scope of soft body dynamics is quite broad, including simulation of soft organic materials such as muscle, fat, hair and vegetation, as well as other deformable materials such as clothing and fabric. Generally, these methods only provide visually plausible emulations rather than accurate scientific/engineering simulations, though there is some crossover with scientific methods, particularly in the case of finite element simulations. Several physics engines currently provide software for soft-body simulation.
Ronald Paul "Ron" Fedkiw is a full professor in the Stanford University department of computer science and a leading researcher in the field of computer graphics, focusing on topics relating to physically based simulation of natural phenomena and machine learning. His techniques have been employed in many motion pictures. He has earned recognition at the 80th Academy Awards and the 87th Academy Awards as well as from the National Academy of Sciences.
The Tokamak Game Physics SDK is an open-source physics engine.
Rigs of Rods (RoR) is a free and open source vehicle-simulation game which uses soft-body physics to simulate the motion destruction and deformation of vehicles. The game is built using a specific soft-body physics engine called Beam, which simulates a network of interconnected nodes and gives the ability to simulate deformable objects. With this engine, vehicles and their loads flex and deform as stresses are applied. Crashing into walls or terrain can permanently deform a vehicle until it is reset; however, not all vehicles in the game have flexible bodies.
anyKode Marilou is a modeling and simulation environment for mobile robots, humanoids, articulated arms and parallels robots operating in real-world conditions that respect the laws of physics. This robotics suite is used in research centers as well as industry for various projects like humanoid architectures, wheeled and multi legged vehicles and multi-robot systems (Multi-agents).
Simulation Open Framework Architecture (SOFA) is an open source framework primarily targeted at real-time physical simulation, with an emphasis on medical simulation.
It is mostly intended for the research community to help develop newer algorithms, but can also be used as an efficient prototyping tool or as a physics engine.
Physically based animation is an area of interest within computer graphics concerned with the simulation of physically plausible behaviors at interactive rates. Advances in physically based animation are often motivated by the need to include complex, physically inspired behaviors in video games, interactive simulations, and movies. Although off-line simulation methods exist to solve most all of the problems studied in physically-based animation, these methods are intended for applications that necessitate physical accuracy and slow, detailed computations. In contrast to methods common in offline simulation, techniques in physically based animation are concerned with physical plausibility, numerical stability, and visual appeal over physical accuracy. Physically based animation is often limited to loose approximations of physical behaviors because of the strict time constraints imposed by interactive applications. The target frame rate for interactive applications such as games and simulations is often 25-60 hertz, with only a small fraction of the time allotted to an individual frame remaining for physical simulation. Simplified models of physical behaviors are generally preferred if they are more efficient, easier to accelerate, or satisfy desirable mathematical properties. Fine details are not important when the overriding goal of a visualization is aesthetic appeal or the maintenance of player immersion since these details are often difficult for humans to notice or are otherwise impossible to distinguish at human scales.
Cannon.js is an open source JavaScript 3D physics engine created by Stefan "schteppe" Hedman. Unlike physics engine libraries ported from C++ to Javascript, cannon.js is written in Javascript from the start and can take advantage of its features. In a 2013 comparison with Ammo.js, cannon.js was found to be "more compact, more comprehensible, more powerful with regard to its performance and also easier to understand", but did not have as many features.
