To get rid of the limitations of a real sand table which is not portable and has high professional requirements of sand painting techniques, also to enhance the naturalness and interest of users' experience, an algorithm of colored sand painting simulation is proposed. The algorithm consists of two main parts: (1) Colored sand painting generation method. It uses HSV and RGB models to express color information. (2) Details processing method. It takes advantages of principle of mass conservation to simulate the sand transfer process and random perturbations for various realistic painting techniques. The experimental results indicate that our algorithm can not only present technique details in a realistic, effective, and realtime manner, but also simulate colored sand painting with fine details.

In this project we are aimed at developing a humanmachine interaction system of sand painting to make sand painting learning easily and to realize a more popular art form. Up to now, our sand painting system can completely achieve simulations of 10 types of common gesture techniques of sand painting. An all-in-one machine with multi-touch interaction is adopted for sand painting system to provide a better user experience. By selecting different sand painting simulating techniques and sand colors, users can carry out multi-touch interaction-based sand painting on the touch screen.