When creating images that will be viewed by the masses there are often times that computer animators need to cheat physics and create there own rules and boundaries. Whether it is because a certain calulation would take too long to computer during run-time to just trying to create something that will WOW the audience are considerations that every animator must make.
To begin with let's first look at the area's in which computer animator's tries to mimic physics as closely as possible. First most computer animations go by the particle model (Jewett, 24) when dealing with objects. Often times they will start out with nothing more then a block or come other basic figure, build the physics equations and data around that model, and then later build up the model to make it look what they want to look like. This allows them to use the real physics equation as closely as possible.
http://physics.nad.ru/Physics/English/mech.htm
One of the problems with fully using equations from physics is the computational time it requires to render each scene accurately. However, in the case of research it is more important to create the scene accurately than to save computational time. Therefore when using models of data or accurately reflecting reasearch computer graphics usually sacrifice speed in order to get more accurate results.
http://physics.nad.ru/Physics/English/mech.htm
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