Computer Simulation and Generation of Moving Sand Pictures

Moving sand pictures are interesting devices that can be used to generate an infinite number of unique scenes when repeatedly being flipped over. However, little work has been done on attempting to simulate the process of picture formulation. In this paper, we present an approach capable of generating images in the style of moving sand pictures. Our system defines moving sand pictures in a few steps, such as initialization, segmentation and physical simulation, so that a variety of moving sand pictures including mountain ridges, desert, clouds and even regular patterns can be generated by either automatic or semi-automatic via interaction during initialization and segmentation. Potential applications of our approach range from advertisements, posters, post cards, packaging, to digital arts.