Modeling rocky scenery taking into account joints

Abstract

Research on methods for representing natural objects and phenomena by computer graphics (CG) has been steadily broadening the scope of represented objects in recent years. Among such research, visual simulation of rocky scenery is an important issue that has a wide range of applications related to visual contents, such as in landscape simulation. In the early days of research on terrain scenery representation, a great deal of techniques for representing terrain shapes and rocky textures mainly using noise generation methods such as the midpoint displacement method and FFT were reported. In the natural rocky scenery, cracks called "joints" are an important visual feature. After cracking base rocks by joints, the change of the rock shapes according to some factors, such as eliminating rock pieces by weathering or moving by gravity, determines the consequent rocky scenery. In order to create such rocky scenery, we propose a rocky scenery modelling method based on joint formation and rock elimination/movement simulation.