My first year, I made the bold (and somewhat unwise)
decision to take a graduate course about Physics simulation
for Movies & Games. Very cool class, but definitely not
first-year material. We learned about physics simulation
techniques related to collision, deformation,
fluid simulation, general simulation techniques
(Forward Euler, Implicit Euler, Lagrangian and Semi-Lagrangian), and a LOT of linear algebra.
For a really long time, I've been super interested in
procedural terrain generation. A lot of techniques exist
to turn random landscapes into realistic ones, mostly
hydraulic and thermal erosion, but wind/aeolian erosion
simulation seemed to be totally overlooked.
So for my final project, I decided to recreate the techniques
used in the paper
Desertscape Simulation
by Paris et al. 2019. The resulting simulator is able to create
a couple types of sand dunes (Transverse: repeated, linear; Barchan:
crescent-shaped) just starting from some sand amount
and wind simulation.
I did it in an online 3D engine
called THREE.JS, and I'll try to get it hosted live soon so
the project can be explored interactively here. It was very
fun to work on and I would love to look more at the physics
so I can try to improve upon the techniques used, and perhaps
turn it into something a little more fun and interactive!