Links

Links and Further Reading I've gathered together here some links to online resources, projects, papers and other publications that I think are interesting and relate to my main areas of interest. They vary from massive projects to tid-bits of information but I collect them here for my reference and maybe you will find them useful. If you know of some resource out there that you think I would find useful and are not shown here feel free to post to the forum to let me know. Online Projects These links are to some of the many other projects out there on the web where people are conducting their own research and development into procedurally generated world content. The variety is a testament to the popularity of the subject while the quality of many of them is truly impressive given the spare-time nature of most of their development. If anyone involved in any of these projects finds this page and wants to link back to my own site please feel free Infinity - An impressive project to create a massively multiplayer online game largely from procedurally generated content. From their welcome page: "Infinity features an advanced procedural engine allowing for a seemingly infinite galaxy of unique star systems and planets to discover and explore, including seamless planetary landing" Outerra - Nice looking planetary engine that takes real world elevation data and interpolates high resolution detail using fractals. Virtual Terrain Project - Large collection of online resources under the VTP banner who's stated aim is "To foster the creation of tools for easily constructing any part of the real world in interactive, 3D digital form" EarthSim - Freely downloadable high quality earch and solar system simulators well worth a look even if it's just to check out their gallery Pangea - The New Beginning - Pangea is a online space-based adventure game project set in a vast, procedurally generated universe Dmytry Lavrov - Various procedural voxel landscape and cloud rendering technologies amongst other things. Well worth a look with plenty of nice screenshots but very light on information on how any of it works. Papers and Publications The internet is a truly great resource for research but the sheer scale of it can be a problem. I've linked here a collection of what I consider to be some of the more interesting papers and articles on procedural content related topics. There are bound to be many more out there I've not come across, but if you know of any you think I would like feel free to post on the forums. General Procedural Work Eric Bruneton - Part of the Evasion team working on virtual environments for animation and image synthesis of natural objects, there are many screenshots, videos and especially papers on all sorts of interesting subjects to be found here. Water Realistic Natural Effect Rendering: Water - Detailed article with code examples to create a real time animated water effect Efficient rendering of breaking waves using MPS method - This paper proposes an approach for rendering breaking waves out of large-scale of particle-based simulation Texturing Terrain Rendering in Frostbite Using Procedural Shader Splatting - Excellent and detailed description of terrain texturing with shader code examples. Commercial Products This is a selection of the commercially available (i.e. not free) packages related to procedural content generation that I've come across which have interested me. I've not used most of them but the ideas and type of functionality on offer makes them worth investigation. Terragen - Now in it's second major version, Terragen is capable of producing truly exceptional procedurally generated landscapes and is well worth investigating - especially as there is a slightly restricted free version you can download from their site to try out! CityEngine - What started out as a research project but is now a commercial product, CityEngine procedurally generates both street plans and the buildings themselves and has been used in the movie industry amongst others. World Machine 2 - Virtual world editing and rendering solution Simul Weather & CloudWright - Realtime and offline cloud generation Sundog Software - Commercial real time cloud and atmospheric lighting solution Pandromeda MojoWorld 3 - High quality virtual world editing and rendering solution. Demo available on website. Miscellaneous Developer Links This section is a grab-bag of links to resources I've come across that I think may be useful for developers working with real time graphics, GPUs and related technologies. They are not presented in any particular order of quality or relevance, I just thought they may be useful... CG Textures - Extensive library of free textures that can be useful for non-commercial development projects CodePlex - CodePlex is Microsoft's open source project hosting web site. You can use CodePlex to create new projects to share with the world, join others who have already started their own projects, or use the applications on the site and provide feedback. DevMaster.net - General game development and news site with some interesting articles Books There are surprisingly few books dedicated to the subject of procedural world generation (although I would of course like to help remedy that) especially considering the popularity of the subject with graphics and simulation programmers, but I've listed here some of the books I've read or referred to that I think may be of interest to others working in this area. Most are only related to some aspect or other - frequently just the actual rendering of content - but as with all the other sections on this page feel free to post on the forums if there are others you think should be recommended. General Graphics: NVIDIA GPU Programming Guide - The NVIDIA GeForce 8 and 9 Series GPU Programming Guide provides useful advice on how to identify bottlenecks in your applications, as well as how to eliminate them by taking advantage of the GeForce 8 and 9 Series’ features. In addition, a special section on DirectX 10 will inform you of common problems encountered when porting from DirectX 9 to DirectX 10 Programming Vertex, Geometry, and Pixel Shaders - This is a high quality full wiki based online book on shader programming and appears to be well worth a look] The CG Tutorial - With the CG language being replaced by HLSL this book is not as relevant as it once was, but is still interesting and available free online. Real-time Rendering - Well regarded, technical and thorough description of many essential real time graphics techniques. Texturing and Modeling: A Procedural Approach - Almost de-facto book on procedural texture and effect generation now in it's third edition. GPU-based Techniques for Global Illumination Effects - Discusses use of GPU techniques for effects such as mirror reflections, refractions, caustics, diffuse or glossy indirect illumination, radiosity, single or multiple scattering in participating media, tone reproduction, glow, and depth of field. 3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development - This book covers fundamental 3D fundamental maths concepts that are especially useful for computer game developers and programmers. GPU Gems Series GPU Gems: Programming Techniques, Tips, and Tricks for Real-time Graphics - (Note this book is now readable for FREE on the NVIDIA Website) GPU Gems 2: Programming Techniques for High-performance Graphics and General-purpose Computation - (Note this book is now readable for FREE on the NVIDIA Website) GPU Gems 3: Programming Techniques for High-Performance Graphics and General-Purpose Computation - (Note this book is now readable for FREE on the NVIDIA Website) Shader X Series Shader X2 Shader X3 Shader X4 Shader X5 Shader X6 Shader X7 Landscapes and Terrain Focus on 3D terrain programming - largely readable online but without the images. Real-time 3D Terrain Engines Using C++ and DirectX - Covering everything from the fundamentals of DirectX 9, and creating realistic weather effects, to advanced terrain geometry management, the book works through the complete construction of a robust outdoor game engine.