Feature-Based Volumetric Terrain Generation and Decoration

Two-dimensional height fields are the most common data structure used for storing and rendering of terrain in offline rendering and especially real-time computer graphics. By its very nature, a height field cannot store terrain structures with multiple vertical layers such as overhanging cliffs, caves, or arches. This restriction does not apply to volumetric data structures. However, the workflow of manual modelling and editing of volumetric terrain usually is tedious and very time-consuming. Therefore, we propose to use three-dimensional curve-based primitives to efficiently model prominent, large-scale terrain features. We present a technique for volumetric generation of a complete terrain surface from the sparse input data by means of diffusion-based algorithms. By combining an efficient, feature-based toolset with a volumetric terrain representation, the modelling workflow is accelerated and simplified while retaining the full artistic freedom of volumetric terrains. Feature Curves also contain material information that can be complemented with local details by using per-face texture mapping. All stages of our method are GPU-accelerated using compute shaders to ensure interactive editing of terrain. Please note that this paper is an extended version of our previously published work [1] .