1,726 research outputs found
Garden of Eden: Software Packages for the Generation and Rendering of Visually Realistic Trees and Forests
Garden of Eden is an exercise in procedural generation of lifelike worlds. It randomly generates a forest scene of realistically shaped and proportioned asymmetric trees on top of a simple topographical map. This map is then rendered in an HTML5 3D canvas, with support for user navigation. The end result of this project is a sort of game, though without any goal, narrative, or creative purpose. It is simply a static rendering of a natural environment, open for exploration, closed to manipulation, exploring how users find visual pleasure and meaning in virtual environments. The passive interaction of the user is integral to this simulation, as it reflects how one would observe a natural environment; by forcing the user into the same perspective from which they view actual forest environments, Garden of Eden explores the concept of natural, the distinction between real and virtual, and the user\u27s sense of place. All software packages are offered open source, with detailed documentation, for users wishing to create their own arboreal experience
A Survey of Procedural Techniques for City Generation
The computer game industry requires a skilled workforce and this combined with the complexity of modern games, means that production costs are extremely high. One of the most time consuming aspects is the creation of game geometry, the virtual world which the players inhabit. Procedural techniques have been used within computer graphics to create natural textures, simulate special effects and generate complex natural models including trees and waterfalls. It is these procedural techniques that we intend to harness to generate geometry and textures suitable for a game situated in an urban environment. Procedural techniques can provide many benefits for computer graphics applications when the correct algorithm is used. An overview of several commonly used procedural techniques including fractals, L-systems, Perlin noise, tiling systems and cellular basis is provided. The function of each technique and the resulting output they create are discussed to better understand their characteristics, benefits and relevance to the city generation problem. City generation is the creation of an urban area which necessitates the creation of buildings, situated along streets and arranged in appropriate patterns. Some research has already taken place into recreating road network patterns and generating buildings that can vary in function and architectural style. We will study the main body of existing research into procedural city generation and provide an overview of their implementations and a critique of their functionality and results. Finally we present areas in which further research into the generation of cities is required and outline our research goals for city generation
Progressive refinement rendering of implicit surfaces
The visualisation of implicit surfaces can be an inefficient task when such surfaces are complex and highly detailed. Visualising a surface by first converting it to a
polygon mesh may lead to an excessive polygon count. Visualising a surface by direct ray casting is often a slow procedure. In this paper we present a progressive refinement renderer for implicit surfaces that are Lipschitz continuous. The renderer first displays a low resolution estimate of what the final image is going to be and, as the computation progresses, increases the quality of this estimate at an interactive frame rate. This renderer provides a quick previewing facility that significantly reduces the design cycle of a new and complex implicit surface. The renderer is also capable of completing an image faster than a conventional implicit surface rendering algorithm based on ray casting
Urbis Terram - Designing and Implementing a Procedural City Generation Tool for Unity3D Game Engine
The use of procedural content generation is becoming more and more popular in the video game industry. With games such as Minecraft or No Man’s Sky we have seen the potential of PCG in video game creation but also its challenges. In fact, while the processing power and memory capabilities of our machines are unceasingly growing, human capability for content creation doesn’t seem to be able to follow the same pace. Game developers had then to come up with several techniques and methods that will help them generate lots of content for their games while still keeping a certain level of control on the output. Urbis Terram is a procedural city generation tool for Unity3D that allows the creation of complete cities to be used in video games or simulations made with this engine. The goal of this thesis is to tackle the technical challenge of designing and implementing a PCG tool that will help game developers to quickly generate terrains, road networks and allotment spaces for buildings and other urban areas. The goal is to have a unique complete city generation tool that can enable quick game design iterations and can be used to create complex virtual worlds
Evolving artificial terrains with automated genetic terrain programing
La industria del videojuego afronta en la actualidad un gran reto: mantener el coste del desarrollo de los proyectos bajo control a medida que estos crecen y se hacen más complejos. La creación de los contenidos de los juegos, que incluye el modelado de personajes, mapas y niveles, texturas, efectos sonoros, etc, representa una parte fundamental del costo final de producción. Por eso, la industria está cada vez más interesada en la utilización de métodos procedurales de generación automática de contenidos. Sin embargo, crear y afinar los métodos procedurales no es una tarea trivial.
En esta memoria, se describe un método procedural basado en Programación Genética, que permite la generación automática de terrenos para videojuegos. Los terrenos presentan características estéticas, y no requieren ningún tipo de parametrización para definir su aspecto. Así, el ahorro de tiempo y la reducción de costes en el proceso de producción es notable. Para conseguir los objetivos, se utiliza Programación Genética de Terrenos.
La primera implementación de GTP utilizó Evolución Interactiva, en que la presencia del usuario que guía el proceso evolutivo es imprescindible. A pesar de los buenos resultados, el método está limitado por la fatiga del usuario (común en los métodos interactivos). Para resolver esta cuestión se desarrolla un nuevo modelo de GTP en el que el proceso de búsqueda es completamente automático, y dirigido por una función de aptitudo. La función considera accesibilidad de los terrenos y perímetros de los obstáculos. Los resultados obtenidos se incluyeron como parte de un videojuego real.Nowadays video game industry is facing a big challenge: keep costs under control as games become bigger and more complex. Creation of game content, such as character models, maps, levels, textures, sound effects and so on, represent a big slice of total game production cost. Hence, video game industry is increasingly turning to procedural content generation to amplify the cost-effectiveness of video game designers' efforts. However, creating and fine tunning procedural methods for automated content generation is a time consuming task.
In this thesis we detail a Genetic Programming based procedural content technique to generate procedural terrains. Those terrains present aesthetic appeal and do not require any parametrization to control its look. Thus, allowing to save time and help reducing production costs. To accomplish these features we devised the Genetic Terrain Programming (GTP) technique.
The first implementation of GTP used an Interactive Evolutionary Computation (IEC) approach, were a user guides the evolutionary process. In spite of the good results achieved this way, this approach was limited by user fatigue (common in IEC systems). To address this issue a second version of GTP was developed where the search is automated, being guided by a direct fitness function. That function is composed by two morphological metrics: terrain accessibility and obstacle edge length. The combination of the two metrics allowed us remove the human factor form the evolutionary process and to find a wide range of aesthetic and fit terrains. Procedural terrains produced by GTP are already used in a real video game.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (TIN2007-68083-C02-01); (TIN2008-05941); (TIN2011-28627-C04)
Junta de Extremadura (GRU-09105); (GR10029)
Junta de Andalucía (TIC-6083
Distributed texture-based terrain synthesis
Terrain synthesis is an important field of Computer Graphics that deals with the generation of 3D landscape models for use in virtual environments. The field has evolved to a stage where large and even infinite landscapes can be generated in realtime. However, user control of the generation process is still minimal, as well as the creation of virtual landscapes that mimic real terrain. This thesis investigates the use of texture synthesis techniques on real landscapes to improve realism and the use of sketch-based interfaces to enable intuitive user control
Shallow waters simulation
Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Informatics EngineeringRealistic simulation and rendering of water in real-time is a challenge within the field of computer graphics, as it
is very computationally demanding. A common simulation approach is to reduce the problem from 3D to 2D by
treating the water surface as a 2D heightfield. When simulating 2D fluids, the Shallow Water Equations (SWE)
are often employed, which work under the assumption that the water’s horizontal scale is much greater than it’s
vertical scale.
There are several methods that have been developed or adapted to model the SWE, each with its own advantages
and disadvantages. A common solution is to use grid-based methods where there is the classic approach
of solving the equations in a grid, but also the Lattice-Boltzmann Method (LBM) which originated from the field of
statistical physics. Particle based methods have also been used for modeling the SWE, namely as a variation of
the popular Smoothed-Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method.
This thesis presents an implementation for real-time simulation and rendering of a heightfield surface water
volume. The water’s behavior is modeled by a grid-based SWE scheme with an efficient single kernel compute
shader implementation.
When it comes to visualizing the water volume created by the simulation, there are a variety of effects that
can contribute to its realism and provide visual cues for its motion. In particular, When considering shallow water,
there are certain features that can be highlighted, such as the refraction of the ground below and corresponding
light attenuation, and the caustics patterns projected on it.
Using the state produced by the simulation, a water surface mesh is rendered, where set of visual effects are
explored. First, the water’s color is defined as a combination of reflected and transmitted light, while using a Cook-
Torrance Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) to describe the Sun’s reflection. These results
are then enhanced by data from a separate pass which provides caustics patterns and improved attenuation
computations. Lastly, small-scale details are added to the surface by applying a normal map generated using
noise.
As part of the work, a thorough evaluation of the developed application is performed, providing a showcase of
the results, insight into some of the parameters and options, and performance benchmarks.Simulação e renderização realista de água em tempo real é um desafio dentro do campo de computação gráfica,
visto que é muito computacionalmente exigente. Uma abordagem comum de simulação é de reduzir o problema
de 3D para 2D ao tratar a superfície da água como um campo de alturas 2D. Ao simular fluidos em 2D, é
frequente usar as equações de águas rasas, que funcionam sobre o pressuposto de que a escala horizontal da
água é muito maior que a sua escala vertical.
Há vários métodos que foram desenvolvidos ou adaptados para modelar as equações de águas rasas, cada
uma com as suas vantagens e desvantagens. Uma solução comum é utilizar métodos baseados em grelhas
onde existe a abordagem clássica de resolver as equações numa grelha, mas também existe o método de Lattice
Boltzmann que originou do campo de física estatística. Métodos baseados em partículas também já foram
usados para modelar as equações de águas rasas, nomeadamente como uma variação do popular método de
SPH.
Esta tese apresenta uma implementação para simulação e renderização em tempo real de um volume de
água com uma superfície de campo de alturas. O comportamento da água é modelado por um esquema de
equações de águas rasas baseado na grelha com uma implementação eficiente de um único kernel de compute
shader.
No que toca a visualizar o volume de água criado pela simulação, existe uma variedade de efeitos que podem
contribuir para o seu realismo e fornecer dicas visuais sobre o seu movimento. Ao considerar águas rasas, existem
certas características que podem ser destacadas, como a refração do terreno por baixo e correspondente
atenuação da luz, e padrões de cáusticas projetados nele.
Usando o estado produzido pela simulação, uma malha da superfície da água é renderizada, onde um conjunto
de efeitos visuais são explorados. Em primeiro lugar, a cor da água é definida como uma combinação de
luz refletida e transmitida, sendo que uma BRDF de Cook-Torrance é usada para descrever a reflexão do Sol.
Estes resultados são depois complementados com dados gerados num passo separado que fornece padrões
de cáusticas e melhora as computações de atenuação. Por fim, detalhes de pequena escala são adicionados à
superfície ao aplicar um mapa de normais gerado com ruído.
Como parte do trabalho desenvolvido, é feita uma avaliação detalhada da aplicação desenvolvida, onde é apresentada
uma demonstração dos resultados, comentários sobre alguns dos parâmetros e opções, e referências
de desempenho
Realistic reconstruction and rendering of detailed 3D scenarios from multiple data sources
During the last years, we have witnessed significant improvements in digital terrain modeling, mainly through photogrammetric techniques based on satellite and aerial photography, as well as laser scanning. These techniques allow the creation of Digital Elevation Models (DEM) and Digital Surface Models (DSM) that can be streamed over the network and explored through virtual globe applications like Google Earth or NASA WorldWind.
The resolution of these 3D scenes has improved noticeably in the last years, reaching in some urban areas resolutions up to 1m or less for DEM and buildings, and less than 10 cm per pixel in the associated aerial imagery. However, in rural, forest or mountainous areas, the typical resolution for elevation datasets ranges between 5 and 30 meters, and typical resolution of corresponding aerial photographs ranges between 25 cm to 1 m. This current level of detail is only sufficient for aerial points of view, but as the viewpoint approaches the surface the terrain loses its realistic appearance.
One approach to augment the detail on top of currently available datasets is adding synthetic details in a plausible manner, i.e. including elements that match the features perceived in the aerial view. By combining the real dataset with the instancing of models on the terrain and other procedural detail techniques, the effective resolution can potentially become arbitrary. There are several applications that do not need an exact reproduction of the real elements but would greatly benefit from plausibly enhanced terrain models: videogames and entertainment applications, visual impact assessment (e.g. how a new ski resort would look), virtual tourism, simulations, etc.
In this thesis we propose new methods and tools to help the reconstruction and synthesis of high-resolution terrain scenes from currently available data sources, in order to achieve realistically looking ground-level views. In particular, we decided to focus on rural scenarios, mountains and forest areas.
Our main goal is the combination of plausible synthetic elements and procedural detail with publicly available real data to create detailed 3D scenes from existing locations. Our research has focused on the following contributions:
- An efficient pipeline for aerial imagery segmentation
- Plausible terrain enhancement from high-resolution examples
- Super-resolution of DEM by transferring details from the aerial photograph
- Synthesis of arbitrary tree picture variations from a reduced set of photographs
- Reconstruction of 3D tree models from a single image
- A compact and efficient tree representation for real-time rendering of forest landscapesDurant els darrers anys, hem presenciat avenços significatius en el modelat digital de terrenys, principalment gràcies a tècniques fotogramètriques, basades en fotografia aèria o satèl·lit, i a escàners làser. Aquestes tècniques permeten crear Models Digitals d'Elevacions (DEM) i Models Digitals de Superfícies (DSM) que es poden retransmetre per la xarxa i ser explorats mitjançant aplicacions de globus virtuals com ara Google Earth o NASA WorldWind. La resolució d'aquestes escenes 3D ha millorat considerablement durant els darrers anys, arribant a algunes àrees urbanes a resolucions d'un metre o menys per al DEM i edificis, i fins a menys de 10 cm per píxel a les fotografies aèries associades. No obstant, en entorns rurals, boscos i zones muntanyoses, la resolució típica per a dades d'elevació es troba entre 5 i 30 metres, i per a les corresponents fotografies aèries varia entre 25 cm i 1m. Aquest nivell de detall només és suficient per a punts de vista aeris, però a mesura que ens apropem a la superfície el terreny perd tot el realisme. Una manera d'augmentar el detall dels conjunts de dades actuals és afegint a l'escena detalls sintètics de manera plausible, és a dir, incloure elements que encaixin amb les característiques que es perceben a la vista aèria. Així, combinant les dades reals amb instàncies de models sobre el terreny i altres tècniques de detall procedural, la resolució efectiva del model pot arribar a ser arbitrària. Hi ha diverses aplicacions per a les quals no cal una reproducció exacta dels elements reals, però que es beneficiarien de models de terreny augmentats de manera plausible: videojocs i aplicacions d'entreteniment, avaluació de l'impacte visual (per exemple, com es veuria una nova estació d'esquí), turisme virtual, simulacions, etc. En aquesta tesi, proposem nous mètodes i eines per ajudar a la reconstrucció i síntesi de terrenys en alta resolució partint de conjunts de dades disponibles públicament, per tal d'aconseguir vistes a nivell de terra realistes. En particular, hem decidit centrar-nos en escenes rurals, muntanyes i àrees boscoses. El nostre principal objectiu és la combinació d'elements sintètics plausibles i detall procedural amb dades reals disponibles públicament per tal de generar escenes 3D d'ubicacions existents. La nostra recerca s'ha centrat en les següents contribucions: - Un pipeline eficient per a segmentació d'imatges aèries - Millora plausible de models de terreny a partir d'exemples d’alta resolució - Super-resolució de models d'elevacions transferint-hi detalls de la fotografia aèria - Síntesis d'un nombre arbitrari de variacions d’imatges d’arbres a partir d'un conjunt reduït de fotografies - Reconstrucció de models 3D d'arbres a partir d'una única fotografia - Una representació compacta i eficient d'arbres per a navegació en temps real d'escenesPostprint (published version
Terrainosaurus: realistic terrain synthesis using genetic algorithms
Synthetically generated terrain models are useful across a broad range of applications, including computer
generated art & animation, virtual reality and gaming, and architecture. Existing algorithms for terrain
generation suffer from a number of problems, especially that of being limited in the types of terrain that
they can produce and of being difficult for the user to control. Typical applications of synthetic terrain
have several factors in common: first, they require the generation of large regions of believable (though not
necessarily physically correct) terrain features; and second, while real-time performance is often needed
when visualizing the terrain, this is generally not the case when generating the terrain.
In this thesis, I present a new, design-by-example method for synthesizing terrain height fields. In this
approach, the user designs the layout of the terrain by sketching out simple regions using a CAD-style
interface, and specifies the desired terrain characteristics of each region by providing example height fields
displaying these characteristics (these height fields will typically come from real-world GIS data sources).
A height field matching the user's design is generated at several levels of detail, using a genetic algorithm to
blend together chunks of elevation data from the example height fields in a visually plausible manner.
This method has the advantage of producing an unlimited diversity of reasonably realistic results, while
requiring relatively little user effort and expertise. The guided randomization inherent in the genetic
algorithm allows the algorithm to come up with novel arrangements of features, while still approximating
user-specified constraints
Erosion, Self-Organization, and Procedural Modeling
Procedural modeling of natural objects such as coastlines and terrains in combination with their characteristic erosion features involves integration of appropriate physical models with the procedural approach and culminates in the development of physically-based simulations. I have invented a modeling paradigm for designing this type of simulations in a way that generalizes formation of complex relationships between erosion features, such as the tributary relationship. My generalization uses self-organization to define where erosion occurs and how it propagates rather than emphasizing the exact mechanism of erosion and the details of what happens during each erosion event. Propagation of state changes due to self-organization can also lead to emergence of fractal character, which is essential for modeling of natural objects, without explicit fractal synthesis. I successfully apply my methodology to procedural modeling of dunes, coastlines, terrains that undergo hydraulic erosion due to channel networks, and 3D channel networks that form underground
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