Stochastic Geomorphological Transport for Terrain Erosion Simulation [Paper + Code]
Hey everyone! I am happy to announce the publication of my research paper `Stochastic Geomorphological Transport for Terrain Erosion Simulation` (open access and with full source code). Posting this here because it is, in a way, a culmination of a lot of old posts I made in this subreddit in the past.
The main idea behind this work is to take the classic "particle-based erosion" models and formally relate them back to the physical differential equations (which was an open problem). This solves a bunch of issues with scale-invariance and parameter scaling (which really plagued me). It also allows for modeling of momentum conservation giving a bunch of nice morphological features (as you can see in the video) - and much more!
I haven't posted here in a while, but if you were active a few years ago, you may remember my old procedural hydrology models that also included momentum conservation, most prominently SimpleHydrology. In a way, this paper is the result of a ~2 year journey to formalize that model and publish it as research.
Also, don't be intimidated by the math - if you ever read my original SimpleHydrology posts and understood the source code, this model is very similar but has physically correct scaling and normalization factors to make sure the entire simulation is accurate.
I am happy to answer questions if you have any! - Nick
Edit: I will be presenting this at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles on the 21st of July - if you (or anybody you know) are interested in procedural terrains and will be around, I would be happy to meet up.