I know the most prominent methods of procedural, dynamic terrain generation (e.g. marching cubes, dual contouring, surface nets, etc.).
What I would like to know is what other types of deformable, volumetric procedurally generated methods are there?
I’ve read about layered stacked columns and a method using a heightmap and 2 cameras, in which one camera is at the lowest possible elevation tracing the ground level from beneath.
“Procedural” and “volumetric” really are independent concepts.
You can procedurally generate geometry that’s volumetrically based (various voxel methods) or that is not (snapping 2D maps, height maps, etc.)
You can use volumetric geometry with manually built levels, or procedurally build content.
For Unreal, there’s the Voxel Terrain plugin, which allows runtime modification and thus can also let you do procedural work.
Other engines that have voxel based terrain built in includes Roblox, and the C4 Engine. (The C4 author documented his Transvoxel algorithm in high detail, it’s probably worth a read! And the code is only $100 if you want it.)
I agree.
I know between the title and the couple of time I mentioned attributes in describing what I’m looking for, I was a bit inconsistent. I hope I didn’t indicate procedural and volumetric were one-in-the-same. I did say, “deformable, volumetric procedurally generated methods”, at least once, lol.
I’ve tried Voxel Terrain plugin and it’s great. However, it’s not quite what I’m looking for.
If I had to choose, at this moment, I’d use dual contouring… but I don’t have to. So I’m looking around to see what else is out there.
While not being volumetric, I read about dynamically-displaced height maps as I was looking for any heightmap method for terrain deformation. Layered stacked columns is intriguing to me and I might try that one if I don’t realize anything else.
I will look into C4. Thanks.
Also, Unreal supports runtime procedural delta layers for the heightmap, so if you want to, like “add impact craters” or whatever, then that could work.