20 - Mojoworld: Building procedural planets

Abstract

MojoWorld is a software product that builds and images fractal planets. These planets are entirely procedural, unless augmented with imported data. MojoWorld employs various tricks and techniques to create images with unprecedented detail. These images are sometimes realistic, sometimes surrealistic, and sometimes outright abstracts. This chapter begins by discussing fractals and visual complexity. Capturing and reproducing the complexity in the nature in synthetic imagery is one of the principal research problems in computer graphics. Fractal geometry is a potent language of complex visual form. It reduces much of the staggering complexity observed in nature to very simple mathematics. One of the easiest examples of a fractal is the von Koch snowflake. In the von Koch snowflake the repeated shape is an equilateral triangle. Each time it is repeated on a smaller scale, it is reduced in size by exactly one-third. This repetition can continue at ever smaller scales ad infinitum, leading to a curve—the edge of the snowflake—that is very complex. The chapter also discusses building mountains and building a virtual universe. Mountains are fractal, and one can make very convincing synthetic mountains with the aid of some simple fractal computer programs.