Muscle Simulation Survey
Muscles have a significant influence on modeling animated human figures in that they anatomically affect body deformation (e.g., skin deformation) and biomechanically account for dynamic body movement (e.g., locomotion). Therefore, substantial efforts have been made on the study of muscles with respect to their influence, for the purpose of boosting reality and accuracy in many applications including graphics and biomechanics. In this paper, we present a survey of various approaches proposed to model and simulate muscles. Modeling muscles focuses on representing their realistic deformation, whereas simulating muscles aims at discovering their biomechanical controls to coordinate plausible body movements. Muscles have been modeled based on a variety of deformation methodologies: geometrically-based, physically-based and data-driven approaches. Estimations of muscle controls have been pursued by two main approaches: inverse and forward simulations. We review and discuss these approaches, and conclude with suggestions for future research. (Submission in progress.)
