Generation and Visualization of 3-D Realistic Natural Terrain Based on FBM

Abstract

Based on fractal Brownian motion (FBM) model this paper presents a method for generating controllable and predictable natural terrains. The whole base-plane of the terrain to be simulated is first divided into several triangles by using the coordinates of limited known characteristic points on the plane. And then for each triangle, the three dimensional data of the simulated terrain are recursively generated according to a subdividing criterion based on the modified random midpoint displacement (RMD) method. Finally, the realistic visualization of the generated terrain data is implemented with PC computer by using VC++6.0 and OpenGL software programming. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm provides a good performance in generating various terrains such as multi-peak mountains, general flat terrains, and complex combined terrains in divinable and controllable manner; and it is a better solution to the shape uncontrollable problem encountered in the traditional FBM based methods for modeling natural terrains.