Why should i include a muscle system within my works?

CG is becoming more powerful, affordable and accesible to low end users, causing a demand in the rise of quality in 3d works. A greater need to implement and understand realistic characters , characters in the physical world and makes them believable,
Unfortunatly there is little information easily gained on the subject.

commercial modelling packages overwhelmingly ignore muscle modelling as an essential part of body modelling. defining the shape characters are built from the musculature up therefore the understanding of anatomy and how it relates to the charater features and the skin deformation of a cg characte is essential. Anatomy is the biological science concerned with the form, position, function, and relationship of the structures in the human body. Realistic movement can be generated in animation from studying the surface geometry of the skin.
Cgi muscle systems vary from our own organic systems, think of them as simplified versions. Although possible performance issues deligate that it is not recommended to replicate anatomically correct muscle systems whilst rigging a cg character, however it is important to understand where and what the muscles of a subject do to accurately portray the realism intended.

The application of muscle systems is still predominatly targeted towards the aims of CGI film studios. However the number of cgi developers and artists are increasing, looking for new ways to implement the potential they posses to improving on realism.

Muscle Systems are used in indusrty to support their pipelins, budgets allow for teams that to perform the dedicated role of working muscles on to high end production levels. With the luxury of time and money to support the process.

Unfortunatly most indusrty tools are propriatory systems written specifically for a particular need and are therefore kept secret to the general public.

When approached on forums people are reluccent to elaborate on questions when approached. This makes it very hard to analyse such tools and methods but reinforces the lack of knowledge that we outside the circle need.

According to one developer, Peter shipkov designer of his own C++ system muscle system states that a system should have the following qualities.

• muscles have to preserve the body bulk when folding, unfolding and twisting limbs and torso.
- reliability - to firmly "hold" the binded geometry;
- relatively simple realisation and easy at work - to use if possible the available instruments for muscle creating;
- flexible structure permitting easy coping with arising problems and quick adapting to different body shapes ( biped, quadruped, invertebrates, etc. );
- automated process of creating and editing that enables building in of muscular systems in numerous virtual characters during a relatively short period of time.

Creating a full realistic muscle system would be a complex task and involving a large amount of scripting and calculations, a process that the average user would avoid .

I plan to therefore, research the most popular methods. Based on information gained from industry research. i will discuss both the advantages and disadvantages for availible systems that require minimal scripting . A conclusion will be presented offering a system targetted so that the average user could implement as a solution, offering realistic deformations based on the following criteria.