Large-Scale Physics-Based Terrain Editing Using Adaptive Tiles on the GPU

Abstract

Physics-based approaches could simplify terrain modeling by increasing its realism. However, most simulations provide only a low level of user control because they fail on large-scale phenomena or focus only on the modeling of limited effects. A new physics-based system for digital terrain editing is suitable for digital-content authors such as game designers, artists, and 3D modelers. It doesn't assume in-depth knowledge about physics-based simulations. Users can load large terrains from external sources, generate them procedurally, or create them manually, and they can edit them at interactive frame rates on a GPU. To allow large-scale editing, the system divides terrain into tiles of different resolutions according to the terrain's complexity, and it stores each tile as a mip-map texture. In addition, the physics-based simulation uses different levels of detail, depending on the terrain-change dynamics. Compared to nonadaptive computation, this approach can achieve 50 percent speedup and use 25 percent less memory. The Web extra is a video that shows how physics-based approaches to modeling can process terrain sizes larger than what was previously possible.