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Path=/; secure; Domain=.wikipedia.org set-cookie: NetworkProbeLimit=0.001;Path=/;Secure;SameSite=None;Max-Age=3600 set-cookie: WMF-Uniq=P4s-EB57tNAbW8gv6Fb55gOSAAAAAFvd4x1bA2ONmrZ29zO-WYyPZ3LLVV4KXAjy;Domain=.wikipedia.org;Path=/;HttpOnly;secure;SameSite=None;Expires=Sat, 03 Jul 2027 00:00:00 GMT transfer-encoding: chunked x-request-id: 14b9c440-ba66-4f8d-8a2d-9add8765baf9 x-analytics: 8000 Ragdoll physics - Wikipedia Jump to content Main menu Main menu move to sidebar hide Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Special pages Search Search Appearance Donate Create account Log in Personal tools Donate Create account Log in Contents move to sidebar hide (Top) 1 History 2 Approaches 3 See also 4 References Toggle the table of contents Ragdoll physics 17 languages العربية Deutsch Español Français Հայերեն Italiano 日本語 한국어 Norsk bokmål Polski Português Русский Svenska Türkçe Українська 粵語 中文 Edit links Article Talk English Read Edit View history Tools Tools move to sidebar hide Actions Read Edit View history General What links here Related changes Upload file Permanent link Page information Cite this page Get shortened URL Switch to legacy parser Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item Appearance move to sidebar hide From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Type of procedural animation This article needs more citations . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Ragdoll physics" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( July 2011 ) ( Learn how and when to remove this message ) Still from an early 1997 animation using ragdoll physics Ragdoll physics is a type of procedural animation used by physics engines , which is often used as a replacement for traditional static death animations in video games and animated films . As computers increased in power, it became possible to do limited real-time physical simulations , which made death animations more realistic. Early video games used manually created animations for a character’s death sequences. This had the advantage of low CPU utilization, as the data needed to animate a "dying" character was chosen from a set number of pre-drawn frames. In contrast, a ragdoll is a collection of multiple rigid bodies (each of which is ordinarily tied to a bone in the graphics engine's skeletal animation system) tied together by a system of constraints that restrict how the bones may move relative to each other. When the character dies, their body begins to collapse to the ground, honouring these restrictions on each of the joints' motion, which often looks more realistic. The term ragdoll comes from the problem that the articulated systems, due to the limits of the solvers used, tend to have little or zero joint/ skeletal muscle stiffness, leading to a character collapsing much like a toy rag doll , often into comically improbable or compromising positions. Modern use of ragdoll physics goes beyond death sequences. History [ edit ] The Jurassic Park licensed game Jurassic Park: Trespasser exhibited ragdoll physics in 1998 but received very polarised opinions; most were negative, as the game had a large number of bugs. It was remembered, however, for being a pioneer in video game physics . [ 1 ] There are fighting games where the player controls one part of the body of the fighter and the rest follows along, such as Rag Doll Kung Fu , as well as racing games such as the FlatOut series. Recent procedural animation technologies, such as those found in NaturalMotion 's Euphoria software, have allowed the development of games that rely heavily on the suspension of disbelief facilitated by realistic whole-body muscle/nervous ragdoll physics as an integral part of the immersive gaming experience, as opposed to the antiquated use of canned-animation techniques. This is seen in Grand Theft Auto IV , Grand Theft Auto V , Red Dead Redemption , Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2 as well as titles such as LucasArts ' Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Puppet Army Faction's Kontrol , which feature 2D powered ragdoll locomotion on uneven or moving surfaces. Approaches [ edit ] Ragdolls have been implemented using Featherstone's algorithm and spring-damper contacts. [ 2 ] An alternative approach uses constraint solvers and idealized contacts. [ 3 ] While the constrained-rigid-body approach to ragdolls is the most common, other " pseudo -ragdoll" techniques have been used: Verlet integration : used by Hitman: Codename 47 and popularized by Thomas Jakobsen , [ 4 ] this technique models each character bone as a point connected to an arbitrary number of other points via simple constraints. Verlet constraints are much simpler and faster to solve than most of those in a fully modelled rigid body system, resulting in much less CPU consumption for characters. Inverse kinematics post-processing: used in Halo: Combat Evolved , this technique relies on playing a pre-set death animation and then using inverse kinematics to force the character into a possible position after the animation has completed. This means that, during an animation, a character could wind up clipping through world geometry, but after it has come to rest, all of its bones will be in valid space. Limitations can force body parts to move through each other in unnatural ways; for instance, a character's hand may lay on top of their chest in a death animation, but the hand is then moved through the chest to the ground underneath by inverse kinematics. Blended ragdoll: this technique was used in Halo 2 , Halo 3 , Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare , Left 4 Dead , Medal of Honor: Airborne , Team Fortress 2 , and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune . It works by playing a pre-made animation, then binding the ragdoll to the last frame of the animation. Occasionally the ragdolling player model will appear to stretch out and spin around in multiple directions, as though the character were made of rubber. This erratic behavior has been observed to occur in games that use certain versions of the Havok engine, such as Halo 2 and Fable II . Active ragdoll: used primarily in Unreal Engine games such as Unreal Tournament 3 and Killing Floor 2 . It works by playing a pre-made animation, but constraining the output of that animation to what a physical system would allow. This helps alleviate the ragdoll feeling of characters suddenly going limp, offering correct environmental interaction as well. This requires both animation processing and physics processing, thus making it even slower than a traditional ragdoll alone, though the benefits of the extra visuals seem to overshadow the reduction in processing speed. See also: Euphoria (software) Procedural animation : traditionally used in non-realtime media (film/TV/etc), this technique (used in the Medal of Honor series starting from European Assault onward) employs the use of multi-layered physical models in non-playing characters (bones / muscle / nervous systems), and deformable scenic elements from "simulated materials" in vehicles, etc. By removing the use of pre-made animation, each reaction seen by the player is unique, whilst still deterministic. See also [ edit ] Cartoon physics Joint constraints Stair Dismount Turbo Dismount Lugaru References [ edit ] Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ragdoll physics . ↑ Wyckoff, Richard (May 14, 1999). "Postmortem: DreamWorks Interactive's Trespasser" . Game Developer. Archived from the original on February 27, 2008. ↑ US 6067096 , Nagle, John, "Method and system for generating realistic collisions in graphical simulations", published May 23, 2000 ↑ Baraff, David & Witkin, Andrew (1997). "Physically Based Modeling: Principles and Practice" . Proc. SIGGRAPH '97 . SIGGRAPH 97 . Los Angeles: Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Graphics. ↑ "Advanced Character Physics" . Teknikus.dk. Archived from the original on April 10, 2008 . Retrieved November 30, 2008 . v t e Physics engines ( list ) Game physics Procedural animation Physically based animation Ragdoll physics Free / open source Box2D Bullet Cannon.js Chipmunk Newton Game Dynamics Open Dynamics Engine PhysX Phyz Project Chrono Siconos Simulation Open Framework Architecture Proprietary AGX Multiphysics Algodoo Chipmunk Digital Molecular Matter Euphoria Havok Reactor Vortex Related topics Tire model Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ragdoll_physics&oldid=1362326172 " Categories : Computer physics engines Video game development Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description is different from Wikidata Use mdy dates from April 2025 Articles needing additional references from July 2011 All articles needing additional references Commons category link is on Wikidata Articles prone to spam from November 2014 This page was last edited on 3 July 2026, at 06:13  (UTC) . Page was rendered with Parsoid . Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. , a non-profit organization. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Contact Wikipedia Legal & safety contacts Code of Conduct Developers Statistics Cookie statement Mobile view Search Search Toggle the table of contents Ragdoll physics 17 languages Add topic 0