LorentzFrame

Yuppers, the Rigs of Rods approach is a great, easy, simple way to simulate stress, strain, permanent deformation, and even breakage. There are also more traditional "continuous media" approaches -- tensor-based approaches. A bit more complicated mathematically, ok, a LOT more complicated mathematically, but which are the only way to go when you have too many rods in your rig   The continuous-media physics is actually very beautiful: check out "Theory of Elasticity" by Landau & Lifshitz.

http://www.enchgallery.com/fractals/fracthumbs.htm

has an endless supply of supernal wallpaper

and this is the screen-saver companion

http://www.electricsheep.org/