Processing Simulation There are various erosion simulations in use at the moment. Most are for the study of erosion on large terrains used for in the development and feasibility study of dams. Theses are single dimensional or two dimensional as they deal only with the effect on the surface. Also, the scale of these simulations is so large that one cannot see the aesthetic quality of the erosion. The need was to create a 3 dimensional erosion simulation where the building could be made of multiple layers, thus not only eroding the surface but also changing the topology like by creating ‘holes’. A simulation that let us control erosion by controlling various parameters such as topology, thickness of surface, water input, material strength. More importantly to help us study the aesthetic qualities of erosion, something that has been missing in all the other existing erosion simulations. This led us to develop our own simulation. Initially we started developing the software in both Maya and Processing. The aim was to develop a software that was very fast and could handle thousands of particles every frame. While Maya was quick to give results, it was limited by the speed of the system. It became important not to use the existing particle system so that we could specifically control the particles that need to be updated every frame. This was possible only through processing but has taken a long time to get it working in a manner that best simulated nature. Our initial attempt in processing was to create a system where the building was formed by millions of particles (representing actual sand particles) using the iso-surf technique. But this technique became highly complex and failed technically at certain point. This made us go back to the mesh logic, where the mesh represented just the surface. This surface would then get depressed to represent erosion. The voxel system of storing the surface was implemented to speedup the simulation speed. The erosion effect gets better with increase in mesh resolution, but then computing power restricts this resolution.
Processing Simulation_Development Time-line The time-line shows the development of the processing simulation starting from a simple plane to complex geometries.
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