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Vector-based Terrain Modelling
June 6, 2025
Our work on vector based
terrain modeling has been accepted at Computer Graphics Forum.
Vector-based graphics offer numerous advantages over grid-based models, including resolution independence and ease of manipulation. Despite these benefits, their use in landscape modeling remains uncommon because of a lack of direct editing and interactive feedback, essential for matching the artist's vision. We introduce a new vector-based model for creating digital terrains based on computationally efficient primitives. We propose a method to convert grid-based digital elevation maps to this representation with a user-defined level of accuracy. Once vectorized, the terrain can be authored using interactive high-level skeleton-based tools adapted to the primitive representation, allowing local deformations that automatically adapt to underlying geomorphological structures and landforms of the terrain.
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Sphere Carving
May 21, 2025
Our work on implicit carving
has been accepted at SIGGRAPH.
We introduce Sphere Carving, a novel method for automatically computing bounding volumes that closely bound a procedurally defined implicit surface. Starting from an initial bounding volume located far from the object, we iteratively approach the surface by leveraging the signed distance function information. Field function queries define a set of empty spheres, from which we extract intersection points that are used to compute a bounding volume. Our method is agnostic of the function representation and only requires a conservative signed distance field as input. This encompasses a large set of procedurally defined implicit surface models such as exact or Lipschitz functions, BlobTrees, or even neural representations. Sphere Carving is conceptually simple, independent of the function representation, requires a small number of function queries to create bounding volumes, and accelerates queries in Sphere Tracing and polygonization.
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Multi-scale erosion
April 16, 2025
Our work on terrain metrics
has been accepted at Eurographics.
Algorithms for terrain synthesis and ecosystem simulations often rely on simple descriptors such as slope, light accessibility, and drainage area. Typically, the results are assessed from a perceptual standpoint, focusing primarily on visual plausibility. Other fields, such as Geomorphology and Earth Sciences, have already proposed several analytical descriptors to measure various terrain properties. This work aims to bridge the gap between these disciplines and Computer Graphics. We provide a comprehensive review of commonly used terrain metrics that may be relevant for landscape synthesis, analysis, or simulations. Additionally, we compare the approaches used in Computer Graphics to see if these metrics, or similar ones, have already been introduced. Moreover, we report feedback from a preliminary study conducted with a group of artists to evaluate the potential applications of previously unused metrics. By implementing all these metrics, we enable performance comparisons (image courtesy of Benoît Martinez, UBISOFT).