Real-time Rendering of Granular Materials

A joint research project including Oryx Simulations AB and VRLab at Ume̊a University aims to create real-time simulations of “complex materials”, including granular materials such as sand and gravel. A study of existing methods for rendering results from particle based simulations of granular materials has been performed. A general approach, based on the marching cubes surface extraction algorithm, is implemented as an alternative to the current rendering module at Oryx. The solution generates closed meshes, approximating the implicit bodies defined by the particle simulation. The implementation is designed to work together with general particle simulation environments as well as arbitrary methods generating point based results. This report will give an introduction to implemented concepts such as mesh based surface extraction, multitexturing effects and illumination models implemented on GPU. The resulting module is integrated into the simulation environment at Oryx. The module fulfills the requirements with some performance issues left as future work.