The paper presents a novel approach for simulating realistic time-varied carpets. By the approach, a 3D carpet is constructed first by image-based techniques from a single photo input, through a texel structure, established to generate realistic carpet with its pattern guided by the captured image. Secondly, a time-varying simulation model is proposed to capture various aspects of the time-dependent appearance of carpets such as dust accumulation, color fading and fiber change. Additionally, a time-varying map is provided to control the specific weathering degrees at different voxels in time through a hierarchal model. Experimental results show that the realistic time-varying simulation is successfully achieved with the proposed techniques. © 2009 IEEE.