Deriving suitable surface shader and displacement map information from terrain erosion simulations

Abstract

Realistic models of landscapes are frequently needed for 3D renderings, VFX work or video games. However, modelling landscapes can be a complicated and labour-intensive task, and for this reason many algorithms have been proposed to automate the process. Among the many possible ways to create a synthetic landscape, the most common one is to simulate the various types of erosions (e.g. erosion caused by glaciers and rivers) that create real eroded landscapes, like the Grand Canyon. Many solutions have been published to simulate such terrain erosion processes in computer graphics. However the authors usually only focus on recreating a landscape at geometry level, and ignore the shading level. But surface colours and textures that match the coarse geometric features created by the erosion simulation are also essential ingredients for a believable result. And obtaining detailed surface textures by running a simulation that is able to catch all the micro-details involved is usually technically infeasible due to the involved complexity. The method that we propose attempts to get around this barrier by applying suitable detail shaders to the results of a coarse-grid erosion simulation. Specifically, we will work with a dictionary of pre-generated shaders for landscape appearance: these will be both "plain" colour...