Simulation of Dust Devils and Dust Storms on Mars with Unreal Engine

My thesis focuses on improving the implementation of the phenomena such dust devil and dust storm on the Mars for project VaMEx-VTB, which is aimed to provide a simulation framework for testing the swarm behavior on the Mars terrain (Vamex-vtb. https://cgvr.cs.uni-bremen.de/research/vamex-vtb/.), using the new version of particle system ‘Niagara’ in Unreal Engine. The goal of the thesis is to provide a more realistic environment so that the swarm behavior on the Mars will be tested in a more accurate way.

Description

The aim of the thesis is to develop the phenomena mentioned before(dust devil and dust storm) with the game engine – Unreal Engine 4. The first step is to collect accessible information, especially video records and pictures of dust devil and dust storm, to study the simulated animation and research work of other institutions and universities and to see more media work like game and movies related to Martian environment. In this way, the morphological characteristics and movement characteristics of dust devil and dust storm can be summarized, and the difference between them on Mars and the earth is known.

The tool I use is Unreal Engine 4, and the function I use mainly is the latest version of the particle system - Niagara. The main visual effect will base on different emitters and emitter system. Blueprints will also be used when necessary(for example, when the texture of particles is modified). After the characteristics of dust devil and dust storm are derived, the visual effects will be implemented according to the Unreal Engine documentation and tutorials, and they will be tested in the VaMex-VTB project. Several different versions of those two phenomena will be developed according to the previous research.










Results

Dust Devil: the Niagara system of dust devil consists of three emitters: 1. The vortex at the bottom 2. The main cylinder 3. Smoky sand. The visual effect is as the pictures and videos shown.

Dust Storm: the Niagara system of dust storm consists of six emitters: 1. “Moving Wall” 2. Smoky sand 3.&4. Two emitters for lightning 5. Micro-particles 6. Rocks. The visual effect is as the pictures and videos shown.

Files

Full version of the bachelor thesis (English only)

Visual effect of dust devil in the project Vamex

Visual effect of dust storm in the project Vamex

License

This original work is copyright by University of Bremen.
Any software of this work is covered by the European Union Public Licence v1.2. To view a copy of this license, visit eur-lex.europa.eu.
The Thesis provided above (as PDF file) is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.
Any other assets (3D models, movies, documents, etc.) are covered by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org.
If you use any of the assets or software to produce a publication, then you must give credit and put a reference in your publication.
If you would like to use our software in proprietary software, you can obtain an exception from the above license (aka. dual licensing). Please contact zach at cs.uni-bremen dot de.