Abstract: Recently,as the development of virtual reality techniques,traffic animation turns to be one of hotspots in computer graphics.This paper provides a survey of the methods in three-dimension traffic animations.First,we present a structured review of methods of road networks,which are the carriers of vehicles.Second,we describe vehicle movement simulations from seven perspectives,including one-dimension car-following method,continuum method,mesoscopic method,hybrid method,path-planning method,rule-based method and data-driven method.We detail their principles,advantages and drawbacks.Finally,we point out some open research areas and possible future directions.