Rock, Sand, Water - Best way to proceed?

[sim]

Hi all,

I'm about to embark on a scene that starts as a sandy desert with rocky mountains in the distance. The camera pov is from a person standing at the edge of this desert. Sand stretching away from them. What needs to happen is that a crack appears right in front of the camera and shoots away to the mountains. The ground falls away, don't think we'll see where it falls to given the camera being close to the ground. Ideally if I can get the scene that far, stage 2 is too have the chasm created rapidly fill with water -  all the way to the mountains!

 

I'm wondering about the best way to tackle the cracking desert. I imagine I would want to avoid a large sand simulation sitting ontop of the rock. I was thinking maybe I could use a sand shader for the majority of the top surface. And have  a v-shaped 'trench' along the crack filled with a sand simulation. Hopefully it blends seamlessly with the shader. Or is that still overkill?

 

I know I'm going to encounter many other issues for this scene(For example 'eroded rock formations' -vs- the fractal noise rocks I've created so far), but that's what I'm wondering about right now.

 

'cheers,

Sim.