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Hey folks, this video shows the latest additions to my landscape rendering project.
It now has a really gnarly landscape, more realistic clouds, and fractal texture grass patches, with occasional flowers randomly spatted on them.
It goes on forever, or thousands of 'miles' before the floating point numbers start crapping out anyway.
It's all fractal based, with quite some time spent on colours. It just a video of me flying around trying to find interesting areas, the previous video showed night time effect. It does about 130+- fps at 1280x768 on a GTX 260, so I might have room for more stuff to render.
I really want to put some trees in, finding the correct way to randomize them should be an interesting job.
I hope you like it, I certainly enjoyed making, errr, finding this landscape!  :)
Dave.

LATEST VID
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-5Z_031x00&feature=g-all-u (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-5Z_031x00&feature=g-all-u)


PREVIOUS VID with less detail, but showing night time:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw1GncYrowc&feature=channel&list=UL (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw1GncYrowc&feature=channel&list=UL)

That's amazing. How did you go about generating those?

now you are talking ;) great scenes! amazing far view, and the grass really give additional feeling of realism ...
you are really creating all this dynamically ?! cool !

randomizing trees ... start out with leaf-less tress, obtaining a "gnarly" wood texture, for rendering the base structue, i am unsure how speed-tree defines their trees, if they just use modified l-systems, or if they use a more specific way to define their trees, nevertheless, i dont know how to implement a pure gpu based tree algorithm that would basically need no extra memory, but generate lots of stuff ...

Very impressive. I would love to hear about the techniques you are using in this.

Thanks guys, I didn't want it to look like a 'computer game' so everything has to be unique, and not blurry or soft looking, which so many games look like to me.
The CPU is creating the basic chunks surrounding the camera down to 5 levels of of fractal, then the shader is adding a further 6, you can see the underlying mesh on close-by peaks. The biggest trick was getting a super fast fbm value, that's used all over the place.
Generally you have to cheat when making these landscape, and I found it interesting that the random fractal approach of inaccurately covering the grass with colour and shade seemed to work. I propose it's the overall uniqueness that's fooling the eye with complexity, I don't really know.
Because i've gone down the route of 'no resources,' for trees I'll have to draw the bark fractally in 2d, using a formula for normal mapping a texture on a 3d surface I found on this forum somewhere.
For leaves I was thinking of using billboard sprites, much in the same way as the 'woody3d' software, athough they don't work when looking directly up at them. But then again, it is all cheating!

A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.!.!.!

"See Mom, no textures!"

As for the trees, some year ago I made  pseudo random trees in this way: I had a list of 32 predefined subtrees (a subtree is the main trunk + one main branch + all its subbranches). Then when I want to make a tree, I overlap 2 3 or 4 randomly selected subtrees. This produces a large variety of different trees without generating them in real time. To increase "randomness", each subtree was transformed by a matrix which zoomed it in/out a little, rotated it a little and shewed it a little.

Looks stunning, DaveH.

Any clues to how you accelerate the Perlin-noise (especially on the GPU)? I've used the Ashima-libs so far (https://github.com/ashima/webgl-noise/), but they are still rather slow?

Btw, this guy: http://procworld.blogspot.ca/ is also doing some amazing stuff on procedural generation of terrain, trees, and buildings.

This is game engine worthy.

Flight simulators, role playing games and lots of other genres could benefit from this kind of rendering. It could use some weather and seasonal effects though.

Christian

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Diagnosis Criteria : Compositionality  : terrain appropriate : Core Goal idea 2 mind 2 brain 2 program 2 rendering 2 scene to our screens, opinion 2 U : data : fabulous execution presentation camera roving in and out of curious exploratories involving stop and turns  manifesting seeming as a safari extraordinaire, Thanks, it was a pleasure filled trip, we enjoyed it!  DO more!
Heres what we think : data story line  : exploration  experience inquisitiory  very cool : sound accompaniment needs work : hope to see more of your project thanks a lot for sharing

what we like about your clip is the feeling it gives of actually being there and the sense that we are there vulnerable to the ravages of time and space in that world you created, the work you did on the ambient-al color modulations were realistic and the  sky backdrop were real looking and the gritty feeling of earth, mud, stone really had the natural feel to them! A special congratulations for the section of the clip where you had the camera circle around a the mountain. Showing different sides of it : data : a real accomplishment!





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Thanks for the comments.
I've read some of procworld's blog and it's very interesting, he also admits to 'cheating' with things faking their look. Computers are just not fast enough - ever!
If this was to become a game, it's inevitable that at some point human intervention is necessary to give a narrative without the need for such vast openness. It's a difficult issue.
I wanted to get the feeling of complete control, so it was given a jetpack feel to movement. You won't at first have a jetpack of course...

This what I eventually want for it, but it has to stay as a hobby at the moment...
Old buildings, but really old stone almost like weather beaten dry stone walls, or a stone henge feel.
Trees of course, but hopefully small bunches of them dotted about.
A sense of insignificance with the player, alone on an alien world, trying to understand his/her place in it and survival.
Scale - I want it to have massive creatures walking about about doing their own thing, like scavenging for resources. As well as small creatures, which give the impression the 'player' has to figure out how these resources and creatures work together. I've always loved the differences of scale and point of view.
At one point the player will encounter a light at night which will turn out to be a hidden black 'angler fish' type of creature laying in wait for something to go by...then show it's red eyes and pointy teeth... ; ) ...but that's all way off in the future for the project. ;D

since you are already gpu heavy, ever thought about combining a ray marcher ? i know this could be hard, but wouldnt it be cool
to place mandelbox buildings around !? a ray marcher would be a completely different object approach since it is more like
including a billboard into your scene, and interacting (shadow casting ) with the polygonal parts can be really tricky to perfomantly implement,
but i would love it ;)

Yes, one idea was to place a cube on it's point buried slightly in the ground. When the deferred pass reaches it, it knows the xyz coordinate and the ray vector from the eye. So in theory I could start tracing at that location into a mandelbox, but only a short way in I suspect. To ray march the whole thing for objects would be expensive!

yay, just low iterations would work smoothly, but when you have a nice DE larger step sizes could work,  i was always wanting ( back in 2000 ) do a some kind of museum movie, where different fractals are presented behind backlit glass structures, but you could easily place many boxes with different params located in various locations, so that one really would have something to explore ;) would love it !!!!11eleven! and one!

This is really amazing. Something like this could be the future for high-detailed game landscapes (or any other uses) that don't use up gigabytes of space.

Don't forget guys - one of our distinguished members is a certain "IQ":

http://www.iquilezles.org/www/index.htm (http://www.iquilezles.org/www/index.htm)

See the demoscene stuff here:

http://www.iquilezles.org/prods/index.htm (http://www.iquilezles.org/prods/index.htm)

Home page:

http://www.iquilezles.org/ (http://www.iquilezles.org/)

For those who may not know Inigo has a job working for a little-known CGI company called Pixar ;)

Yep, his code is very inspiring indeed. It really got me moving forward with learning OpenGL properly.
He even included my first landscape code on his Shader Toy web page! :D
http://www.iquilezles.org/apps/shadertoy (http://www.iquilezles.org/apps/shadertoy)
Dave.

(http://www.quikquak.com/media/Terrains_2012-10-20.png)

No video as yet, but things have moved on a bit. So I'd thought I'd bung a screeny over. ;D
I've managed to get the 2D noise and derivatives down to 5 short lines of code! And it's used everywhere so things sped up quite a bit.
I've put box-bounded distance field objects in, which means I can have a DE algorithms rendering in any area of the landscape. And they only get ray-traced from withing their bounds, so they can be fast to unnoticeable on GPU, large fractals can be a bit of a struggle though.
So I can now create weird spongy creatures and giant moving sculptures on mountain tops etc, etc.
Also there's dynamic weather and lightning effects, as well as underwater and refraction. Plus subtle sound effects like wind rush and water.
A long way to go yet though... when will it ever end!!  :)

Dave H.

really impressive stuff.  :o there are universes between your world and my first tests with landscape generation at the beginning of the nineties on amiga :dink:

Here's the latest with weather, water, and a distance field object:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L_C3VMt4wM&sns=em (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L_C3VMt4wM&sns=em)
I was pleased how the water ripples from the rain came out from just adding a random normal vector to the reflection.

what an awesome project, are you in need of de fractals pr would it be possible to include a non-de renderer as well !?
would love to place mandelboxes in there ;)

regards
ck

I can place any de algorithm in a rotated, scaled and positioned cube. They are quite cheap to render until you get really close then the realities of realtime rendering kick in, and it can get quite slow. I've tried a mandelbox in it, which would make a great treasure chest for an adventure game, but as far zooming in, it's as expensive as expected.
It would be interesting making creatures out of distance field objects, say with mandelbulb heads!!
*edit* What do you mean by 'non-de renderer' ?

Very nicely done! Of course we want the code :)

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For instantaneous locations of Art and Film Reviews by All Masters featured go to see REPLY#12 in the  " huge lack of comments" section


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                       THE FRACTAL FORUM CELEBRITY NEWS
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                      THE FRACTAL FORUM CELEBRITY NEWS
                                    DAVID HOSKINS
                Celebrities : 3D INNOVATORS AND EMANCIPATORS

Today we would like to honor this Artist :
MORE COMMENTS : WHO IS IN THE FRACTAL FORUM CELEBRITY NEWS ?


The film maker shaker MAGICIAN PROGRAMMER, is in todays news!
He is experimenter, animation leader, who wrote a program, and concocted a tremendously powerful game like animation demonstrating landscapes of panic, well thought out scenes of a desolate world waiting to consume you body and soul!   Today, we look inside your movie, and see there are multi-day doom like channels, telling visual stories, in which you express your visions special darkness depending on hell like tetanus terrains with rains in the dark field of brains! Check out this mans film, it's must see yes sir ree! See this film it is one of his best!

Today we like to honor this Programmer film maker.

Greetings and Salutations,
Greetings and Salutations,
Greetings and Salutations, 2 you MASTER  DaveH : aka : David Hoskins.


We would like to present 2 you his mysterious film called : "THE  FRACTAL  TERRAIN 4, water and distance field". Rendered and created by The Master DaveH! in the year 2012 on Earth.


films 1: " THE  FRACTAL TERRAIN 4, water and distance field "

FRACTOLOGIC FRACTAL FORUM FILM REVIEW :





see it here>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L_C3VMt4wM&feature=player_embedded



Intro  :

Oh rock we do see raindrops, fills spills down in worlds dark deaths, left, as the last tide of hopes, happiness gets crushed to death, like mush inside your dark doomy world, without girls, only filled with doom, in your Fractal terrains room! Do more!

 

PICTORIALITY CONSTRUCT!
Heres what we think : It is an amazing exploration safari, on which you invite us to come along. What we like is the edge, cutting our minds eyes with awesome unbelievable pictures, of your private hugger films worlds.

MUSIC CONSTRUCT :
AMBIENTAL SOUNDS OF REAL STORMS, HARNESSING THE INNER NOW EVENT IN ONES CONSCIOUSNESS, THAT ONE EXPERIENCES, IN REAL TIME, IN REAL RAIN WE HEAR IT FALLING. REAL WATER WE SENCE WE ARE GETTING WET TOO!

BACKGROUND CONSTRUCT :
[SECONDS INTO FILMS AT 2:12 ] WE LOVE THE FORE-WARD TRUST OF THE CLOUDS MOVING ABOVE THE HEAD OF THE VIEWER! Also the wispy crinklyness of your clouds, are so cool we drool!
The delectability of tonal colors are enormously harmonic, in so far as creating appropriate atmospheres are concerned. The noticeable jerkiness, of the frames, work in your favor, because it lends credence to the concept, that ones head, would be rotating sharply this way and that trying to discern what direction to take next, excellent! There is the feeling of realness, getting inbound in your expression to us, when looking in your reality exploring. Cool! The levi of excellence, you break quality wise gets the prize in our eyes, demonstrates yummy not crumy perfectly in tune, you are so far as a background sky accompaniment denoting the feeling relationship wise, with the topographies ragged desolateness, forcing the viewer to explore or die!

LIGHTING CONSTRUCT :
Lighting  comes embedded in deaths extraordinary tones of dark black glooms, in each of your picture frames! Light softly flows almost in-perceptively in gray tones of bleakality  harmonics engages a soul lost on your world of hopelessness!

Breakdown
[ seconds in to scene at 0:21 ] here : we see a landscape rapt bare, not a tree to be seen anywhere! Love the black vomit tonalities you engender, and we love the tony bonies tones black clouds doomy rowdy that permeates your skies, exciting our eyes, yes, good this game insane will be . ..and yes that little mountain in the center of the pictoriality lends mystery, love the pus soaked orchid yellow color on the mountain next to the right of the picture frame in 0:21

Breakdown analysis to be continued :











Here you can enjoy another exploration to see his artistry in his movie called the " CRAZY FRACTAL WORLD-TERRAIN RENDERING 3 ",  the snippets of his films is a real pleasure for the gamer connoisseurs eye! !

see it here > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-5Z_031x00&feature=channel&list=UL

Here we see the Artist gets ambitious with a voice over offering dialogue, with musical accompaniment and at [ seconds in to scene at 1:53 ] we hear a,' humbaca,' Alien creature that is unseen speaking to us, lamenting death, as he says : " Hum maca cam muss jib," Check it out what the dudes got to say to you!

Thanks great stuff !



Assessment        :  Architectural Fractologist filmologist :  
Recommendation :  O
Commendation    :  Space Techno Artistry pièce de résistance [ FRACTAL FORUM SPACE ART AWARD ]

  Creator, !  Ecrof si ni ouy!

Opinions cheerfully expressed, whether in consensus or in disagreement, help understanding and collaboration with one another! Peace Be with you.
                                                      


[  Ergo fractal may come to reside within it self, in comfortable self similarities of it self, unchallenged by time and thus fractalized eternally into similar self infinities indefinitely.  ]




MASTER DAVID HOSKINS REPLY#131 LINK>http://www.fractalforums.com/discuss-fractal-forums/a-huge-lack-of-comments/msg53656/#msg53656




                                               The fractal forums, the possibilities are infinite!






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with non de i mean the non distance estimator type of fractals
you could limit the resolution of the boxes, so that realtime would not hit too hard ;)
perhaps rendering into billboards instead of 100 percent perfect fitting, surely the billboard has to be updated every frame, but this way you could limit the resolution of the billboards ....

By real-time, do you mean you recorded the path in real-time and then rendered? Or is this how it looked as you were flying through?

I flew about and recorded it with FRAPS, it rendered at about 120 fps at 1280x720.
Exported with VirtualDub 264 export, which the best way I could find to shrink the video enough and keep colour resolution.

is executable available for download ?!

Not this time sorry, the previous versions are playable though. I got put off a bit by some guy telling me how he enjoyed hacking into my shader code and taking my ideas for himself. I realise that's not in the spirit of sharing but the more weeks I spend on it, the more guarded I am, as I hope to get a Kickstarter project going for a possible game at some point. Especially as it was announced today that Kickstarter is now in my country; UK.

Sidenote: if he was the type of guy who felt a need to tell you, he probably wasn't really that dangerous. The quiet professional thieves tend to do much more harm overall.

(And as much as I personally wish we could all afford to share more of our ideas, I do not condemn those who do not have that freedom.)

Small update. Shows preliminary tree rendering and lush grass effects.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP-OgGWmbXU&feature=share&list=ULWP-OgGWmbXU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP-OgGWmbXU&feature=share&list=ULWP-OgGWmbXU)

Any chance for you to publish new binaries, so we can run this on our superclocked, liquid-cooled triple and quadruple GPU machines? ;)

New foliage video:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXg9yiqXvWs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXg9yiqXvWs)
(apologies for the crazy music! ;D)

All trees are unique, but with 3 varieties.
Also I've implemented a fractal streaming algorithm that only creates the height map normals when needed. This sped up the renderer by 2 times!  :)

Wow very impressive!!!  :beer:  :beer:  :beer:

I like the waving grass - very nice!

Thanks for the comments, last week I added some more animation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPL4OW4juDg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPL4OW4juDg)
A quick demo of localised wind and leaf effects.
The grass is effected by the same local gusts.
The sound is a contribution of all the wind effected branches.

Brilliant work so far.  All kinds of possibilities.  What are the chances you could add caves and caverns?  I guess it would depend on how the terrain was generated, but if you could manage it, I would love to see what you come up with.

Thanks, the next step is going to be game objects and physics, which goes away from fractals a little bit, apart from how they look of course.
Caves are possible but with the height map terrain i would have to have holes cut in it, and addition polygons inserted, which might be better looking if man/player made...

Although I do need to get on with my real job for bit instead of working on this, but it's great fun playing with organised random numbers, and I'm completely addicted.

Dave.

Just to add - great project, though myself rather than adding caves etc. I'd prefer something that's probably even more difficult i.e. "correct" rivers and lakes ;)

Well, it can go on forever! Such is nature.

Wow, nearly two years ago I was doing this.
Well, I'm clearly obsessed! Oh well,  8)
I've recently decided to rewrite the code entirely in the Unity game engine. Once completed, adding other elements to it becomes very easy.
Here I'm demoing a simple physics objects, which took about an hour to put in!
Unity allows me to pass 1D textures for gradiented colours, which enabled some great surface angle variations:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx5nFnzI74c (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx5nFnzI74c)

And one for 3D TVs, which also has better contrast and ambient shaded colours:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxJ-mvIoRIU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxJ-mvIoRIU)

Cheers,
Dave.