Geological Displacement

by David 6. February 2011 12:08

I recently completed the addition of a Displacement function to the Noise Generators.  Displacement is currently available in 2D and 3D styles for the Billow, Voronoi, Perlin, Value, and Ridged noise functions.

Displacement performs a modulation and turbulence to the noise heightmap to produce a wide variety of realistic geomorphing results.  In geological terms, when two tectonic plates collide they will typically displace each other and cause crumpling and deforming of the plate surfaces resulting in compressed or stretched geological features.  In TerreSculptor, a simple perlin noise heightmap can be displaced into cliffs and canyons or a wide variety of other geological features.

Here are three quick examples of Displacement in action, each created in less than one minute.
The noise source for images 1 and 2 was simple perlin and for image 3 simple ridged, all at a 2048x2048 terrain resolution.  No additional editing was performed.
These are screenshots directly from the TerreSculptor 3D viewport with the built-in basic altitude coloring and per-vertex shadows.
If these heightmaps were rendered in high-performance 3D renderers such as 3DS Max or AAA game engines, with full per-pixel lighting and texture mapping, they would look even better.







-

Tags: ,

HMES

About David

IT Professional
Hardware Designer
Software Developer

Category list

Calendar

<<  May 2012  >>
MoTuWeThFrSaSu
30123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031123
45678910

View posts in large calendar
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent anyone else's views.

The contents of this site are copyrighted and may not be duplicated without permission.

Copyright © 2012 David R. Green