Procedural feature generation for volumetric terrains

Abstract

Figure 1: Procedurally generated features with our method: arches (left), an overhang (middle) and a cave (right). ABSTRACTIn this work we present separate procedural methods to generate features that are found in natural terrains which are difficult to reproduce with heightmap-based methods. We approximate overhangs, arches and caves using procedural functions and a reduced set of parameters. This produces visually plausible terrain feature topologies as well as a high degree of artistic control. Our approach is more intuitive and art-directable than other existing volumetric methods that are more complex to integrate into existing voxel engines, due to the framework changes necessary, or rely on automatic procedural generation, thus reducing the ability to provide creative input.