ThatGameCompany posted some information on their sand shader/setup here: thatgamecompany
As you can read there, it was a feat of many months of work and very hard to pull off.
If you are a beginner without any prior knowledge I would assume it is currently way out of your league and should settle for the basics first. Since something like this is mostly aesthetic and doesnt involve gameplay (unless you assume to use it as part of gameplay) coming back later and improving it is what I would do.