This work has accumulated into a technical paper that has been published by Computer Graphics Forum, one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the field of computer graphics. Here Marco explains the reason for the research and the approach that was taken.

“As the Head of Research and Development at El Ranchito (Madrid) I worked with my team in studying new ways of simulating creatures. Commonly in VFX simulation of muscles and fat is achieved using the Finite Element Method (FEM), but this is also known to be difficult to setup, configure, control and get to solve a stable result.

I decided to use latest findings in Simulation to try a different approach. We implemented special constraints for XPBD (Extended Position Based Dynamics) to solve the muscles and fascia of creatures and designed an algorithm to automatically build the internal structure and fibers of the muscles. Furthermore, we proposed a new formulation of the XPBD algorithm to make it a better fit for production.”

The paper is available here on the Wiley Online Library and requires paid access.

Here’s a video that shows some examples of the results archived.