Abstract Many complex natural phenomena with dramatic spatial and temporal variation are difficult to animate accurately with anticipated performance in many graphics tasks and applications, because oftentimes in prior art, a single type of physical process could not afford high fidelity and effective scene production. Volcano eruption and its subsequent interaction with earth is one such complicated phenomenon that must depend on multiphysical processes and their tight coupling. This paper documents a novel and effective particle‐based solution for volcano animation that embraces multiphysical processes and their tight unification. First, we introduce a governing physical model consisting of multiphysical processes enabling flexible state transition among solid, fluid, and gas. This computational physics model is dictated by temperature and accommodates dynamic viscosity that is changing according to the temperature. Second, we propose an augmented smoothed particle hydrodynamics as the underlying numerical model to simulate the behavior of lava and smoke with several required physical attributes. Third, multiphysical quantities are tightly coupled to support the interaction with surroundings including fluid–solid coupling, ground friction, and lava–smoke coupling. We also develop a temperature‐directed rendering technique with nearly no extra computational cost and demonstrate realistic graphics effects of volcano eruption and its interaction with earth with visual appeal.

Abstract Animating debris flow is one of the most challenging tasks in computer graphics, because of its complex dynamic mechanism and the interaction between flows and solids in so large scale region. The difficulty focuses on how to resolve the contradiction between lower computational load and higher request of animating quality. A highly effective method of modeling and animating of debris flow with adaptive grid is presented. First, the debris flow is modeled as Bingham plastic fluid with view‐dependent adaptive grid that is adopted to model the flow volume, and the boundless grids can cover the large scale region of debris flow. Then the mixed grids are built for confluent flows, and the two‐way coupling interaction between flows and environment is considered. After extracting the debris flow surface, adaptive surface tension combining wave particles equation is used to enhance the details and sprays are generated by particles considering the interaction between two fluid volumes. Finally, different dynamic realistic scenes with debris flow are successfully animating at interactive rates. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.