ARTICLE IN PRESS

Computers & Graphics 28 (2004) 559–568

Deformable simulation using force propagation model with

finite element optimization
Kup-Sze Choia,*, Hanqiu Suna, Pheng-Ann Henga, Jun Zoub
a
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chinese University of Hong Kong, New Territories, Hong Kong
b
Department of Mathematics, Chinese University of Hong Kong, New Territories, Hong Kong

Abstract

A key challenge of deformable simulation is to satisfy the conflicting requirements of real-time interactivity and
physical realism. In this paper, we present the mass–spring-based force propagation model (FPM) in which the
simulation speed is tunable to maintain a balance between the two criteria. Deformation is modeled as a result of force
propagation among the mass points in localized regions. Experiments have been performed to study the effects of the
FPM parameters on the eventual deformation. Furthermore, a heuristic optimization technique is proposed to identify
the model parameters for materials as specified by mechanical constants. We employ simulated annealing to tune the
parameters automatically until the simulated shape of the FPM approximates the reference deformation as defined by
the mathematically more rigorous finite element model. The proposed technique provides a feasible solution to the issue
of parameter identification in mass–spring-based models.
r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Physically based modeling; Mass–spring model; Finite element method; Heuristic optimization

1. Introduction organs are used to realize endoscopic surgical training in

Deformable simulation finds many applications in
computer graphics and related fields, including facial-
tissue modeling, cloth animation, and virtual surgery
planning and training. A major goal to all these
applications is to achieve physically realistic deforma-
tion effects. Hence, deformable models based on
physical laws have been developed in an attempt to
accurately depict subtle interactions between virtual
objects and external forces. One successful example is
the mass–spring model. It is an efficient physics-based
technique that models deformable object as a system of
mass points connected with springs. By using this model,
synthetic muscles have been constructed to animate
facial expression [1], multilevel meshes are incorporated
to simulate cloth [2], and mass–spring-based human
*Corresponding author. Tel.: +852-2609-8440; fax: +852-
2603-5302.
E-mail address: kschoi1@cse.cuhk.edu.hk (K.-S. Choi).
virtual environments [3]. On the other hand, to model
the mechanical properties of materials with better
accuracy, finite element method along with continuum
mechanics is applied to deformable modeling. Discreti-
zation into a set of elements is carried out in finite
element modeling (FEM) such that global deformation
is considered locally in each element. Deformation
within an element is taken into account by the
interpolation of nodal displacements as governed by
the underlying constitutive laws. While being more
accurate, the computationally intensive finite element
model is undesirable for applications that demand real-
time interactions. For instance, high refresh rates for
visual and haptic rendering are required in virtual reality
applications. In the pursuit of physical realism for
deformable modeling, it is therefore important to keep
computations efficient.
In this paper, we deal with the problem by presenting
an efficient deformable model based on mass–spring
system, the force propagation model (FPM) [4]. It

0097-8493/$ - see front matter r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cag.2004.04.011
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560 K.-S. Choi et al. / Computers & Graphics 28 (2004) 559–568
features tunable computational speed against realism by
controlling the extent of localized deformation. In this
model, deformation process is modeled as a sequence of
ordered force propagation among the nodes in localized
regions. Our approach is distinct from conventional
mass–spring models in that laborious stiffness matrix
formulation and computation-intensive matrix opera-
tions are not involved. Furthermore, a heuristic techni-
que is employed to tackle a common issue to all mass–
spring systems — specification of appropriate system
parameters that reproduce the mechanical properties of
real objects — by benchmarking against the correspond-
ing finite element model. Our model is implemented with
Java and Java 3D API to take advantage of Java’s
portability and accessibility over the Internet. The paper
is organized as follows. Section 2 gives an overview of
the related work on physically based deformable models.
Section 3 presents the underlying principle of the FPM
along with experimental results. Section 4 discusses the
acquisition of appropriate model parameters by per-
forming heuristic optimization against elastically de-
formable model based on the finite element method.
Finally, Section 5 gives conclusions and future work.
2. Physically based deformable models
Considerable research effort has been devoted to
realistic simulation of deformable objects. Among
deformable models, physically based approaches have
received significant attention. Being fairly easy to
implement and computationally efficient, mass–spring
model is one of the widely used techniques that models
deformation by the dynamics of a system of spring-
connected mass points. However, numerical stability of
the system is sensitive to the choice of model parameters
[3,5] and the vague association between spring stiffness
and material properties makes it difficult to simulate the
true behaviors of deformable objects. A more rigorous
approach is to employ the theory of elasticity [6,7] and
finite element method. FEM has been applied to various
areas of deformable simulation, including surgical
simulation [8–10], emotion editing [11], muscle deforma-
tion [12] and advanced simulations involving nonlinear-
ity and anisotropy [10]. Despite the superiority in
physical accuracy, a major drawback with FEM is that
it involves intensive computations, making real-time
interactive applications prohibitive. Nevertheless, im-
provements have been made by using conventional
techniques such as pre-computation and static conden-
sation, or using the novel technique of space- and time-
adaptive level of detail [13].
Besides these two common models, alternatives have
been suggested. Closely related to FEM is the use of
boundary element method for deformable modeling
[14,15]. In this method, only the surface of object is
discretized, thereby enabling easy meshing and fast
update. It is however not suitable for modeling
inhomogeneous object. Multilayer particle system con-
taining particles of different size has been proposed to
simulate deformable organs [16]. Small particles are used
to model fine details whereas big ones represent coarse
features. In addition to conventional mass–spring
interactions, Lennard–Jones potential [17,18] is em-
ployed to simulate highly deformable objects. In long
element method [19], object is discretized into long
elements, in the form of rectangular parallelepipeds,
filled with incompressible fluids. Deformation is simu-
lated based on the Pascal’s principle and conservation of
volume.
3. The force propagation model
In the FPM, deformation is considered microscopi-
cally as process in which forces propagate from nodes to
nodes via elastic springs. When an external force is
applied to a node on the surface of an object (the node is
said to be stimulated), the force first propagates from
this node to nodes directly adjacent to it, and then
induces secondary forces onto neighboring nodes farther
away. Propagation is localized to the neighborhood of
the stimulated nodes during small deformation, whereas
global deformation can be achieved by allowing forces
to propagate to all the nodes in the system.
3.1. Propagation sequence
To simulate the propagation process, it is necessary to
determine the sequence of nodes that force propagation
would follow. Depending on the magnitude of external
force, a parameter, penetration depth, is introduced to
limit the extent of propagation in such a way that
stronger forces are allowed to penetrate deeper and vice
versa. An algorithm based on breadth-first search is
designed to obtain the sequence. The basic idea is
illustrated by using a 2D mass–spring system with one
single force (see Fig. 1). When the external force F is
applied to the node n1, a list, called perturbed list, is
created to store all the nodes perturbed by the force. The
perturbed list is first headed with the stimulated node n1,
followed by its adjacent nodes in layer L1. The list is
then inserted with nodes in layer L2 — neighbors of
nodes in L1. The insertion process repeats in the same
manner until reaching the penetration depth. Notice that
each node is only visited once during the generation of
the perturbed list, and it is assumed that the order of
nodes in the same layer is irrelevant to the deformation
process. Deformable simulation is then performed by
sequential force propagation on node-by-node basis
according to the order given by the perturbed list.
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Fig. 1. Force propagation in a 2D mass–spring system.

Fig. 2. Generation of a list of perturbed nodes due to multiple forces. Forces are applied to p nodes (n1, n2, y, np) and allowed to
penetrate q layers.

Further consideration, however, is required to handle
the case where multiple external forces are applied. The
scenario is complicated by the presence of multiple
localized deformation regions which may interact or
overlap with each others. Care should be taken to ensure
the synchronization of force propagation in these
regions. This is achieved by extending the algorithm
such that the layers of nodes at same depth but in
different regions are assigned with the same priority in
the perturbed list. Fig. 2 illustrates the algorithm
schematically. Consider a system subjected to p external
forces, resulting in the generation of p localized regions.
The perturbed list is headed with a set S containing all
the stimulated nodes. For every stimulated node ni of the
ith region, adjacent nodes are obtained to form the first
layer of perturbed nodes, Li1. These layers are then
combined to form L1 and inserted into the list. Next, the
neighbors of the nodes in Li1 are searched and then
collected to form Li2. The perturbed list is then inserted
with L2 — the union of all Li2’s. By the same token, the
perturbed list is successively inserted with layers in
increasing order of depth, from L1 through Lq, where q
is the deepest layer constrained by the pre-defined
penetration. As the propagation is synchronized for all
localized regions and each node is only visited once,
when two regions overlap, for example, due to closely
spaced external forces or deep penetration, the layers of
perturbed nodes located at the same depth merge
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562 K.-S. Choi et al. / Computers & Graphics 28 (2004) 559–568
together, forming a common layer shared by the two
stimulated nodes.
3.2. Deformable simulation
Once the sequence of propagation is determined,
deformation is simulated iteratively by evaluating the
updated position of nodes due to the resultant forces
acted on them. Evaluation is carried out according to
the sequence in which all nodes are traversed to
complete one simulation step. Consider a mass–spring
system obeying the Voigt’s model of visco-elasticity,
every link between two nodes comprises of a spring and
a damper connected in parallel. For linear elastic springs
and velocity-dependent dampers, the dynamics of a
node i can be formulated by using the Newton’s law of
motion as follows:
d2 ui dui X kij ðjrij j  lij Þ
mi þ di þ rij ¼ Fi ;
dt2 dt j
jrij j
where mi, ui and di are the mass, position, and damping
constant of the node i, respectively. rij = ujui is the
vector distance between node i and node j, lij is the
natural length of the spring connecting node i and node
j. Fi is the net force acting on node i, which may include
driving forces due to user interaction as well as the
gravitational force. The third term on the left of Eq. (1)
is essentially the net spring force acting on node i. The
dynamics of each node in the system can then be readily
obtained by integrating Eq. (1) numerically using the
finite difference method.
The data flow for the FPM is shown in Fig. 3. To
expedite the generation of propagation sequence and the
ensuing deformable simulation, connectivity informa-
tion of each node is contained in its data structure. This
information is used for instant identification of the
neighboring nodes and the determination of resultant
force due to the connecting springs . Another advantage
is that it allows an arbitrary number of connections to
any other nodes, thereby offering flexibility for geo-
Fig. 3. Simulation system for the force propagation model.
metric modeling and enabling deformable simulation of
both surface and volumetric object.
3.3. Mechanical behavior and timing analysis
The FPM has been tested under different conditions.
First, forces are applied to isotropic surface and
volumetric models consisting of identical mass nodes
and springs. Fig. 4 shows the deformation resulting from
the application of external forces to isolated or groups of
surface nodes. The results demonstrate that the pro-
posed algorithm is capable of handling the case where
multiple external forces exist and localized deformation
regions overlap. Next, anisotropy is tested with trans-
versely isotropic models constructed by setting the
vertical and horizontal springs to different stiffness.
Fig. 5 shows the simulated profiles along the x-axis for
deformable lattices with a pulling force applied on a
surface node. Depending on the stiffness of horizontal
ð1Þ
(kx and kz) and vertical (ky) springs, the lattice
experiences different extent of deformation under the
same external force.
Penetration depth plays a vital role in the FPM. It can
be adjusted to manipulate between computational speed
and degree of localization. The latter also affects the
visual realism of simulated deformation. While a
decrease in penetration depth improves computation
efficiency, deformation may become excessively loca-
lized and lead to unrealistic effects. The choice of
optimum penetration depth depends on spring stiffness,
which is demonstrated in Fig. 6 by varying the
penetration depth for two isotropic lattices. For lattices
with spring stiffness k ¼ 0:5 and 5.0, the optimum
penetration depths are found to be 4 and 8 layers,
respectively. No noticeable difference is observed when
penetration depth is further increased beyond these
optimum values. The result indicates that preprocessing
can be performed to obtain the optimal penetration
depth for a given FPM such that a balance between
speed and visual realism is maintained in subsequent
simulation.
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Fig. 4. Deformable simulation using the force propagation model. Objects shown in (a)–(d) are surface models, forces are applied,
respectively, to 4, 20, 14 and 19 nodes. The volumetric models in (e)–(h) are shown using wireframes. In (e), a cube is stretched
diagonally by pulling the two corner nodes, its surface is rendered in (f). In (g) and (h), forces are applied to 10 and 24 surface nodes.

Lastly, timing experiment is performed on an
isotropic lattice containing 31  15  31 nodes. By
applying a vertical pulling force on a node at the center
of the top surface, simulation time is measured at
different penetration depths which give rise to localized
deformation of different extent. The number of nodes
within a localized region due to a penetration of n layers
is 13ðn þ 1Þð2n2 þ 4n þ 3Þ; where np15: Measurements
are made on a generic 800 MHz Pentium III personal
computer without graphics accelerator. Fig. 7 shows
that computation time increases gradually with penetra-
tion depth at the beginning but grows rapidly at deeper
penetration where more nodes are involved. This verifies
that by restricting the size of localized deformation
regions using suitable penetration depth, computation
time can be limited to a level that is fast enough for
interactive applications. For a simulation of 100
time steps at dt ¼ 0:05; it requires 2.7–5.5 s for penetra-
tion depth varying between 1 and 15 layers, which
is equivalent to the involvement of 6–2736 nodes during
simulation. Furthermore, it only takes 0.83–28 ms
per time step to calculate nodal positions if initializa-
tion overhead, including the generation of perturbed list,
is excluded. This suggests that the algorithm
can be accelerated by eliminating the runtime
node searching process with the creation of a lookup
table to store the perturbed lists at various penetration
depths.
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Fig. 5. Simulated profiles of two transversely isotropic models.
Fig. 6. Simulated profiles at various penetration depths (2–10
layers) for isotropic lattices with different spring stiffness k. For
(a) k ¼ 0:5 and (b) k ¼ 5; the optimum depths are, respectively,
4 and 8 layers.
3.4. Limitation
While the FPM offers the advantage of tunable
simulation speed by modeling deformation as a localized
process, it may also be used to simulate global
deformation, however, at the expense of computational
cost. In such case, the perturbed list would contain all
Fig. 7. Effect of penetration depth on computation time.
the nodes that constitute the deformable object, and the
simulation would be impeded by the increased complex-
ity. In the experiments shown in Section 3.3, the effect of
gravity, which influences the deformable objects glob-
ally, has therefore been ignored by assuming that there
exist some forces in the system to balance out the
gravitational force acting on each individual node.
When a node is simulated, localized simulation is
performed simply with the perturbed nodes in its
neighborhood, thereby reducing the computational
complexity significantly. In the meantime, the simula-
tion speed can also be adjusted by varying the extent of
localization. For those simulations where gravity must
be considered, such as cloth simulation, the model is no
longer scalable as the perturbed list has to include all the
nodes and the computation time is extended. Indeed, it
reduces the FPM to a global deformation approach.
Hence, the FPM is best suited for simulations where
deformation primarily occurs in localized regions, such
as surgical simulation and virtual sculpting, in order to
benefit from the scalability offered.
4. Finite element approximation
Despite the success of mass–spring-based models in
deformable simulation, a common issue with this type of
model is the ambiguity in the specification of appro-
priate model parameters to reproduce the actual
physical behaviors of materials. Mechanical properties
of materials are generally parameterized by Young’s
modulus and Poisson’s ratio, or equivalently the Lamé
elastic constants, which do not have direct relationship
with the parameters in mass–spring system. Model
parameters such as spring stiffness and damping
constant are often adjusted manually to obtain realistic
deformation in an empirical or trial-and-error manner.
Attempts have been made to approximate material
properties by heuristic techniques. Evolutionary strategy
[20] and simulated annealing [21] have been used to
extract the system parameters for mass–spring models.
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Both techniques are however applied to the deformation 4.2. Optimization using simulated annealing
of 2D objects. In our work, simulated annealing is
employed to optimize the FPM for volumetric objects. Originated from statistical thermodynamics, simu-
Automatic parameter extraction is achieved by bench- lated annealing [24] mimics physical thermal annealing
marking against the deformable models developed by process where material is heated and then slowly cooled
the elastic theory and finite element method. down to remove its internal stress and structural defects.
It is widely applied in many combinatorial optimization
problems for its generality and being simple to imple-
4.1. FEM with elastic theory ment. More importantly, while convergence to local
minima occurs with some heuristic techniques, simulated
Mass–spring model reduces volumetric 3D object to a annealing allows probabilistic uphill moves in mini-
network of mass nodes connected with 1D Hookean mization problems that enable intermediate solutions to
springs. Such simplification makes it easy to implement escape from locally trapped minima, thereby offering
but less accurate since all materials making up of the higher chance to reach global minimum. The probability
object are simply lumped as discrete nodes and springs. Pr of an uphill move from a local minimum to a higher
In contrast, finite element model applies continuum point, i.e. the Metropolis Acceptance Criterion, is
mechanics to every constituting element of the object. analogous to the Boltzman distribution in statistical
The stress–strain relationship that governs object thermodynamics, which is given by
deformation is formulated by the generalized Hooke’s 
Law 1 Dcr0;
Pr ¼
X eDc=kB T Dc > 0;
sij ¼ Cijkl ekl ; where Dc is the height for such a transition, kB is the
k;l
Boltzman constant and T is the temperature.
The objective of our optimization problem is to
where sij and ekl are rank two stress and strain tensors,
minimize the difference in position of the nodes in FPM
Cijkl is the rank four elasticity tensor, and i, j, k and l
and FEM, with both models subjected to identical
take the values of 1, 2 or 3, denoting x; y or z
external force configurations. In FPM, suppose Y is the
components [22]. For linear isotropic material, C
set of parameters to be tuned during optimization, the
depends only on two parameters, Young’s modulus E
cost function c is defined as
and Poisson’s ratio s, and can be reduced to a 6  6 XX
square matrix cðYÞ ¼ jpi ðY; Fj Þ  qi ðE; s; Fj Þj; ð2Þ
Fj i
E
C¼ where pi and qi are position vectors of the ith node in
ð1 þ sÞð1  2sÞ
2 3 FPM and FEM, respectively. Fj is the set of external
1s s s 0 0 0
6 7
force vectors applied to the nodes under the jth
6 s 1s s 0 0 0 7
6 7 configuration. c is essentially is the sum of Euclidean
6 s s 1s 0 0 0 7 distances between all nodes in the two models.
6 7:
6 1 7
6 0 0 0 2ð1  2sÞ 0 0 7 Optimization is achieved by minimizing the cost func-
6 1 7
4 0 0 0 0 2ð1  2sÞ 0 5 tion such that all pi’s in FPM approach the correspond-
1 ing qi’s in FEM with an appropriate set of parameters Y.
0 0 0 0 0 2ð1  2sÞ

This relation forms the basis for the modeling of linear
elastic solids with FEM. Using the finite element
method, static deformation of an isotropic object
containing n nodes can be expressed as the linear matrix
system [23]
F ¼ KX;
where the stiffness matrix K, force matrix F and
displacement matrix X are, respectively, 3n  3n, 3n  1
and 3n  1. K is obtained by applying the generalized
Hooke’s law to each of elements. By specifying E and s,
deformation resulting from external forces F can be
obtained in terms of nodal displacements X which serves
as a benchmark for optimizing the FPM.
4.3. Annealing algorithm
The system developed for the optimization of FPM
against FEM is illustrated schematically in Fig. 8. The
cooling schedule, characterized by initial temperature,
final temperature, iterations at each temperature, and
cooling rate, governs the cooling process during anneal-
ing. The temperature reduction function aðTÞ ¼ T=ð1 þ
bTÞ proposed by Lundy and Mees is employed, where b
is a suitably small value [25]. The system is cooled very
slowly but only one iteration is executed at each
temperature. Thermal equilibrium is attained when the
system temperature is below the final temperature under
which no more transition is possible. The cost function
is evaluated with both models subjected to identical
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Fig. 8. Optimization of FPM against finite element model using simulated annealing.
conditions, that is, experiencing the same external forces
and constrained by the same boundary conditions. In
the algorithm, k and d are chosen to be the two FPM
parameters whose values are to be extracted through
optimization (i.e. Y ¼ fk; dg in Eq. (2)). We have
implemented the finite element model using eight-node
hexahedral elements for discretization. The tri-linear
Lagrange shape functions Ni given in Eq. (3) is used to
represent the displacement within an element [26]
Ni ¼ 18ð1 þ rri Þð1 þ ssi Þð1 þ tti Þ; i ¼ 1 to 8;
where ri, si and ti, equal to either +1 or –1, are the
coordinates of node i at the corners of a hexahedron in
the natural coordinate system (r, s, t). Prior to
annealing, the nodal positions of FEM under different
force configurations are obtained offline as reference
data. They are then retrieved by the simulated annealing
algorithm to compare with the runtime FPM data and
calculate the cost function values.
The numerical stability of the mass–spring-based
FPM depends on the model parameters, including
simulation time step, spring stiffness, damping constant
and the mass of nodes [3,5]. Improper specification of
these parameters would lead to a divergent system. Since
the optimization process is randomized, it is possible to
pick out a pair of (k, d) that does not satisfy the stability
criteria. However, since the goal is to find out the
optimized k and d such that the resulting deformation of
FPM is fairly similar to that of FEM, even if
inappropriate parameters are selected and the system
becomes divergent, it will yield a large cost function
value which is an obvious indication of numerical
instability. The parameters are therefore rejected im-
mediately without the need to be passed to the annealing
algorithm for further screening. In our implementation,
an upper bound cmax for the acceptable range of cost
function value is specified to guard against improper
model parameters. This is elaborated schematically in
Fig. 8.
4.4. Heuristic parameter extraction
ð3Þ
The algorithm has been experimented with a cubic
deformable object with 0.1 m in length. The object is
modeled using FPM as a lattice containing 10  10  10
nodes, interconnected by springs with natural length of
0.011 m. Penetration depth is set to 10 layers. On the
other hand, the object is discretized into 729 identical
hexahedrons in FEM. These two models are subjected to
identical configurations as shown Fig. 9. External forces
are applied to four surface nodes on one face of the cube
whereas the opposite face are fixed. Parameter extrac-
tion is conducted, respectively, on two isotropic
materials (materials A and B) with different Young’s
moduli — 10 and 100 kPa. Other material constants and
optimization results are shown in Table 1.
Under the specified external forces, the average
discrepancy in nodal position between FPM and FEM
for both materials is about 9% of the natural length of
spring, which should produce imperceptible visual
differences. When the smallest specified forces are
applied (0.25 N for material A, 2.5 N for material B),
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K.-S. Choi et al. / Computers & Graphics 28 (2004) 559–568
Fig. 9. (a) Experimental settings of deformable lattice for
simulated annealing. (b) Reference data generated by deform-
able simulation using finite element method under the config-
uration in (a).
the average discrepancy is only 1.4%. Experimental
results show that discrepancy increases with the
magnitude of external forces. This is expected due to
the intrinsic error with the simplistic mass–spring model
where gross simplification of 3D objects to mass points
and springs is made. While close matching between the
two models can be achieved for small deformation, it
becomes difficult to approximate the results of FEM
when deformation is very large. However, for applica-
tions involving small deformation, it is advantageous to
use the optimized FPM which not only simulates
deformation with promising computational perfor-
mance but also offers physical accuracy close to that
of finite element model.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, we have presented the Force Propaga-
tion Model, a simulation approach that considers
567
Table 1
FPM parameters obtained by optimizing against the finite
element model
Material A Material B
FEM
Young’s modulus E 10 kPa 100 kPa
Poisson’s ratio s 0.45 0.45
Density r 1040 kg m3 1040 kg m3
External force f 0.25, 0.5, 1.0 N 2.5, 5, 10 N
FPM
Penetration depth q 10 layers 10 layers
Optimization results
Spring stiffness k 38.60 358.6
Nodal damping d 20.36 313.6
deformation as a process where forces propagate from
one node to another in a mass–spring system. An
algorithm is developed to determine the order of force
propagation due to both single and multiple forces.
Deformation is localized to the neighborhood of
stimulated nodes. Computational speed is tunable
against realism simply by controlling the degree of
localization through penetration depth adjustments. Our
approach does not involve any matrix formulations and
operations, thereby enabling easy implementation and
fast calculation. The model has been experimented on
surface and volumetric objects, as well as isotropic and
transversely isotropic materials. The study on the effect
of penetration reveals that deformation can be suitably
localized using an optimum penetration depth such that
computational cost is minimized without deteriorating
visual realism. To identify the model parameters for
materials specified by mechanical constants, the FPM is
benchmarked against the reference simulation data
obtained from the elastic theory and finite element
method.
Improvement to computational efficiency of the
model can be made by creating a lookup table to store
the sequence of force propagation at different penetra-
tion depths. Further research includes the incorporation
of cutting simulation and the development of applica-
tions based on the FPM. Implemented with Java and
Java 3D API, our model possesses the potential for the
development of online applications involving deform-
able modeling such as collaborative industrial design in
virtual environments and web-based surgical training.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by RGC of the HKSAR
(No. 4356/02E CUHK 1/00C, and CUHK direct grant
No. 4450002). Thanks are extended to the anonymous
reviewers for the helpful discussions.
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