This tutorial covers ways to create a terrain and control a flow of particle moving on the terrain in Virtools. Textured dunes: download at http://www.tinkering.net/sciviz/terraindune.cmo The landscape is created With Dune color, for texture and with Dune black-and-white, for displacement map. Please note that the pictures can be created in Photoshop or from a digital camera. You can use the same image for a texture and for a displacement map. You may end up using a black and white image for the displacement map because sometimes you want to have more control over the topography.

The landscape is created with Riverboat color - texture and Riverboat black and white - displacement map created in photoshop. Please note that in this case the pictures need to match very precisely, same size, same scale, and same position of graphics. Press play to activate the displacement map. Open the file called terrain displace.cmo, found in class 4 or that you can download from

Download Creating Instant Terrains with Moving Flows in Virtools Tutorial