Fast Voxel-Based Hydraulic Erosion

Simulating realistic looking hydraulic erosion can greatly increase the realism of terrains in computer graphics. Other areas of application include the fast evaluation of possible erosion scenarios which is needed in extreme weather conditions. The methods presented in this thesis are based on the SPH-method for simulating fluids using particles in 3D. The proposed extensions include the precise collision with a complex terrain represented as a sparsely stored level set. Furthermore, each particle carries its own amount of sediment which is exchanged with the terrain to simulate dissolving and deposition and with other particles to simulate sediment diffusion. By using particles and a level set instead of heightmaps, caves, overhangs and other complicated structures can be generated. The presented methods are fast enough to simulate and render up to 100,000 particles on a terrain with a resolution of 1024*1024*512.