AbstractIn this paper, we articulate a meshless computational paradigm for the effective modeling, accurate physical simulation, and real‐time animation of point‐sampled solid objects. Both the interior and the boundary geometry of our volumetric object representation only consist of points, further extending the powerful and popular method of point‐sampled surfaces to the volumetric setting. We build the point‐based physical model upon continuum mechanics, which affords to effectively model the dynamic elastic behavior of point‐based volumetric objects. When only surface samples are provided, our prototype system first generates both interior volumetric points and a volumetric distance field with octree structure. The physics of these volumetric points in a solid interior are simulated using the Meshless Moving Least Squares (MLS) shape functions. In sharp contrast to the traditional finite element method (FEM), the meshless property of our new technique expedites the accurate representation and precise simulation of the underlying discrete model, without the need of domain meshing. In order to achieve real‐time simulations, we utilize the warped modal analysis method that is locally linear in nature but globally warped to account for rotational deformation. The structural simplicity and real‐time performance of our meshless simulation framework are ideal for interactive animation and game/movie production. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.