In between other projects I’ve slowly been building a number of softimage ICE compounds which deal with aspects of terrain generation. Here’s a result of two of them: a ridged perlin fractal and an iterative slope-based errosion. Only the basics are in place as of now – for instance I need to change the compounds to optionally deform along the original surface normal as opposed to just a y-up implementation (so you can generate planet surfaces etc) and create a set of nodes that let you blen various types of generation schemes (to get, say, a mix of ridged multifractal and fault-fracture methods.) Other items on my “to-do” list include:
Texture masks based on height, curvature and slope
River generation (I have one approach but it leaves a lot to be desired)
Additional fractal deforms (worley and other cell based schemes, “hill”, variants on multifractals)
Crater formation, ecosystem maps, more refined erosion, and mountain/valley range formation
So, there’s a lot to do. But one step at a time.
