Particle-Based Hydraulic Erosion of Heightmap Data

Hydraulic erosion models simulate the gradual wearing away of terrain by flowing water, a phenomenon critical to realistic landscape generation and geomorphological research. Among the various computational approaches, particle-based methods provide a simple yet powerful framework for modeling erosion dynamics on discrete heightmaps. In this article, we implement a two-dimensional particle-based hydraulic erosion algorithm that models the transport of sediment using simulated water droplets that traverse heightmap data. This process demonstrates how local particle-terrain interactions lead to large-scale landscape features such as valleys, gullies, and mountain ridges.