Animating Sand as a Surface Flow

Zhu, Bo; Yang, Xubo

Animating Sand as a Surface Flow

Files

009-012.pdf (637.03 KB)

bo_sand_final.avi (37.87 MB)

Date

2010

Authors

Zhu, Bo
Yang, Xubo

Publisher

The Eurographics Association

Abstract

This paper presents a new efficient method for animating sand and other granular materials in 3D scenes. Our method couples 2D and 3D simulation techniques in a physically based way. A surface flow model of granular material-the BCRE model-is used to separate sand piles into two layers: a surface flowing layer and a static layer. The surface layer is simulated using discrete element method (DEM) to capture the detailed flowing behavior, while the invisible and static layer is represented by a height field for efficiency. The matter transfer between the two layers is modeled based on the surface flow equations through a particle interface. We demonstrate that our method leads to significant improvements of computational efficiency compared to standard discrete element method, without sacrificing the rich 3D animation effects.

        @inproceedings{10.2312:egsh.20101035
,
booktitle = {Eurographics 2010 - Short Papers
},
editor = {H. P. A. Lensch and S. Seipel
},
title = {{Animating Sand as a Surface Flow
}},
author = {Zhu, Bo and 
Yang, Xubo
},
year = {2010
},
publisher = {The Eurographics Association
},
ISBN = {},
DOI = {10.2312/egsh.20101035
}
}