Physically‐based analytical erosion for fast terrain generation

Abstract

Terrain generation methods have long been divided between procedural and physically‐based. Procedural methods build upon the fast evaluation of a mathematical function but suffer from a lack of geological consistency, while physically‐based simulation enforces this consistency at the cost of thousands of iterations unraveling the history of the landscape. In particular, the simulation of the competition between tectonic uplift and fluvial erosion expressed by the stream power law raised recent interest in computer graphics as this allows the generation and control of consistent large‐scale mountain ranges, albeit at the cost of a lengthy simulation. In this paper, we explore the analytical solutions of the stream power law and propose a method that is both physically‐based and procedural, allowing fast and consistent large‐scale terrain generation. In our approach, time is no longer the stopping criterion of an iterative process but acts as the parameter of a mathematical function, a slider that controls the aging of the input terrain from a subtle erosion to the complete replacement by a fully formed mountain range. While analytical solutions have been proposed by the geomorphology community for the 1D case, extending them to a 2D heightmap proves challenging. We propose an efficient implementation of the analytical solutions with a multigrid accelerated iterative process and solutions to incorporate landslides and hillslope processes – two erosion factors that complement the stream power law.