procedurally generated volumetric planets

projects | 13 Apr 2015 | linkz:

Skills Practiced: C++, HLSL, Procedural Generation, Voxel Terrain
Tools Used: DirectX, RasterTek Framework
Project Duration: 3 Weeks
Project Focus: University Coursework

This project was part of my University work at Abertay University Dundee, for the Procedural Generation module coursework.
The coursework required an application to be built which would procedurally generate a landscape, using simplex or perlin noise. A heightmapped landscape was all that was required, but I decided to learn the specifics of density-field terrains (voxel terrains) and built a fully volumetric 3D planet generator. Additionally, I wrote a primitive chromatic aberration post-processing shader.

You can see some of my earlier attempts in these images, when I was learning how to implement the marching cubes algorithm.


The video below shows the finished version of the program. The density field was populated with simplex noise layered upon a parametric sphere, and the fragment shader handles the colouring of the terrain as it moves away from the center of the sphere.