Arenite: A Physics-based Sandstone Simulator

We introduce Arenite, a novel physics-based approach for modeling sandstone structures. The key insight of our work is that simulating a combination of stress and multi-factor erosion enables the generation of a wide variety of sandstone structures observed in nature. We isolate the key shape-forming phenomena: multi-physics fabric interlocking, wind and fluvial erosion, and particle-based deposition processes. Complex 3D structures such as arches, alcoves, hoodoos, or buttes can be achieved by creating simple 3D structures with user-painted erodable areas and vegetation and running the simulation. We demonstrate the algorithm on a wide variety of structures, and our GPU-based implementation achieves the simulation in less than 5 minutes on a desktop computer for our most complex example.

@Article{YJCCWB25,
  author       = "Yang, Zhanyu and Jain, Aryamaan and Cordonnier, Guillaume and Cani, Marie-Paule and Wang, Zhaopeng and Benes, Bedrich",
  title        = "Arenite: A Physics-based Sandstone Simulator",
  journal      = "ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH Conference Proceedings)",
  number       = "4",
  volume       = "44",
  year         = "2025",
  url          = "http://www-sop.inria.fr/reves/Basilic/2025/YJCCWB25"
}