I've recently been experimenting with a simple Voxel-based 3d engine (think Minecraft) which uses heightmaps to define terrain in the following format:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heightmap
Does anyone know of the best software for producing these kind of maps? Preferably with the ability to define a texturemap also. Are terrogen and picogen the only real alternatives?
Answer
Rolling your own is nice, since then you can just create maps, without needing to supply an image, or at least make the image optional. I use Perlin noise in my voxel game for terrain generation. It works pretty well, but is fairly plain compared to the maps that Minecraft produces. I imagine Notch does a lot more than just Perlin noise.
In my game I use 2D Perlin noise to generate the basic flow of the landscape. Then do some carving with another grid of 2D Perlin noise to make a more rugged look. Then I carve tunnels using a wandering path through the terrain.
Perlin noise is a pretty standard way to go:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4753055/perlin-noise-generation-for-terrain
Then this guy Paul Martz has an application that makes such maps, and the source code for doing so.
http://www.gameprogrammer.com/fractal.html
There's also a nice article in Game Developer that goes into procedurally generating voxel terrain. It goes into 2D height maps, and 3D noise for generating maps.
There is an article in the April issue on page 21 (Creator of Worlds) That's rather good, however it looks like it's paid access if you don't already have a subscription.
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