3D Real-Time Hydraulic Erosion Simulation using Multi-Layered Heightmaps
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Date
2024
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Eurographics Association
Abstract
We present a novel method for real-time 3D hydraulic erosion simulation of large-scale terrain. Existing hydraulic erosion methods based on heightmaps and the virtual pipes method are extended to multi-layered heightmaps that can represent more complex 3D features. Our new method for horizontal erosion is able to create overhangs, arches and to some extent caves by allowing water to erode horizontally adjacent bedrock, eventually splitting a column into two new columns. Additionally, we developed an iterative method for bedrock support check that efficiently prevents floating terrain and unrealistic overhangs by propagating bedrock connectivity while incorporating the weight of each column. We implement our method in CUDA, using only features that are also available in standard compute shaders. On a RTX 3070, the resulting method runs at approximately 6ms and 23ms per simulation step for resolutions of 20482 and 40962, respectively.
Description
CCS Concepts: Computing methodologies->Real-time simulation; Physical simulation; Volumetric models
@inproceedings{10.2312:vmv.20241211,
booktitle = {Vision, Modeling, and Visualization},
editor = {Linsen, Lars and Thies, Justus},
title = {{3D Real-Time Hydraulic Erosion Simulation using Multi-Layered Heightmaps}},
author = {Nilles, Alexander Maximilian and Günther, Lars and Wagner, Tobias and Müller, Stefan},
year = {2024},
publisher = {The Eurographics Association},
ISBN = {978-3-03868-247-9},
DOI = {10.2312/vmv.20241211}
}