Abstract :

Physics simulation offers the possibility of truly responsive and realistic animation. Despite wide adoption of physics simulation for the animation of passive phenomena, such as fluids, cloths and rag-doll characters, commercial applications still resort to kinematics-based approaches for the animation of actively controlled characters. However, following a renewed interest in the use of physics simulation for interactive character animation, many recent publications demonstrate tremendous improvements in robustness, visual quality and usability. We present a structured review of over two decades of research on physics-based character animation, as well as point out various open research areas and possible future directions.

Paper :
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In Computer Graphics Forum (Early view published online: 12 September 2012 by Blackwell Publishing).
The definitive version is available at www.interscience.wiley.com

You can also check out the page on commonly used optimization functions in physics-based character motion control.