Procedural Terrain

The final project for class CS6491 Computer Graphics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, fall semester 2015.

ErosionImproved1

Water and erosion simulation

Planted2

Tree and grass rendering

Description:
In this project, I present an overview on how to generate procedural terrain from scratch with user interaction. It starts with a 2D voronoi diagram to specify the coarse shape. Then, the user can edit the terrain using strokes. As a third step, hydraulic erosion is simulated on the heighmap. In a last step, I add grass and trees based on biomes.

Abstract:
Terrain is a topic of endless discussion in computer graphics. It has to cover a large area of the world and at the same time it has to provide enough details for close-up shots. It is extremely time consuming to create a large terrain that is also interesting when viewed closely.
In this project I present a framework for generating terrain, from a coarse grained height map to vegetation generation. The focus lies on combining existing techniques for performing the different tasks. The result should be an island because it provides a natural border of the world.
Applications of procedural terrain include computer games, movies and geographic visualization and simulation. The project was heavily inspired by a talk about “The Good Dinosaur” from Pixar Animation Studios.

Presentation:
[pdf-embedder url=”http://www.sebastian-weiss.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Procedural-Terrain-Presentation.pdf” title=”Procedural Terrain – Presentation”]

Downloads:
Paper
Binaries
Sources

Example rendering: