Fast Rendering of Large-Scale Dynamic Multi-Layered Height Maps

dc.contributor.authorNilles, Alexander Maximilianen_US
dc.contributor.authorMüller, Stefanen_US
dc.contributor.editorEgger, Bernharden_US
dc.contributor.editorGünther, Tobiasen_US
dc.date.accessioned2025-09-24T10:36:53Z
dc.date.available2025-09-24T10:36:53Z
dc.date.issued2025
dc.description.abstractIn this paper, we develop two methods for fast visualization of fully dynamic large-scale multi-layered height maps (MLHMs). MLHMs are a fairly uncommon data structure in computer graphics, which has been used as an efficient representation of 3D terrain, among other applications. Recently, a 3D hydraulic erosion simulation that utilizes this data structure effectively, allowing for real-time simulation of large scale terrain, was developed, but the fast simulation was paired with slow visualization. We extend this previous work with two efficient visualization methods. Rendering the MLHM as boxes is done using ray tracing, while a smooth surface is rendered by ray marching an implicit surface generated by smoothing the MLHM, following previous work. Both techniques are accelerated using a hierarchical data structure built directly from the MLHM, which enables quadtree-like traversal using 2D DDA, where each 2D cell contains 3D axis-aligned bounding boxes (AABBs). This data structure is adapted to accelerate ray marching by appropriately padding AABBs with the smoothing radius. We further propose a soft shadow method and geometric ambient occlusion that work in tandem with this data structure. Our visualization is fast enough to support fully dynamic terrain in real-time, where simulation, creation of our data structure and visualization are done every single frame in real-time for terrain resolutions up to 40962. For lower resolutions, it is possible to run expensive ray tracing and geometric ambient occlusion effects at full window resolution every frame with real-time or interactive frame rates.en_US
dc.description.sectionheadersReal-Time Rendering
dc.description.seriesinformationVision, Modeling, and Visualization
dc.identifier.doi10.2312/vmv.20251227
dc.identifier.isbn978-3-03868-294-3
dc.identifier.pages10 pages
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.2312/vmv.20251227
dc.identifier.urihttps://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/vmv20251227
dc.publisherThe Eurographics Associationen_US
dc.rightsAttribution 4.0 International License
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subjectCCS Concepts: Computing methodologies->Ray tracing; Volumetric models; Real-time simulation
dc.subjectComputing methodologies
dc.subjectRay tracing
dc.subjectVolumetric models
dc.subjectReal
dc.subjecttime simulation
dc.titleFast Rendering of Large-Scale Dynamic Multi-Layered Height Mapsen_US
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