Procedural Generation of 3D Caves for Games on the GPU
(2015) Foundations of Digital Games- Abstract
- Procedural Content Generation in Games (PCG) is a thriv-
ing field of research and application. Recent presented ex-
amples range from levels, stories and race tracks to complete
rulesets for games. However, there is not much research to
date on procedural 3D modeling of caves, and similar en-
closed natural spaces. In this paper, we present a modular
pipeline to procedurally generate underground caves in real-
time, to be used as part of larger landscapes in game worlds.
We propose a three step approach, which can be fully im-
plemented using General-Purpose Computing on Graphics
Processing (GPGPU) technology: 1) an L-System to em-
ulate the... (More) - Procedural Content Generation in Games (PCG) is a thriv-
ing field of research and application. Recent presented ex-
amples range from levels, stories and race tracks to complete
rulesets for games. However, there is not much research to
date on procedural 3D modeling of caves, and similar en-
closed natural spaces. In this paper, we present a modular
pipeline to procedurally generate underground caves in real-
time, to be used as part of larger landscapes in game worlds.
We propose a three step approach, which can be fully im-
plemented using General-Purpose Computing on Graphics
Processing (GPGPU) technology: 1) an L-System to em-
ulate the expanded cracks and passages which form cave
structures in nature, 2) a noise-perturbed metaball approach
for virtual 3D carving, and 3) a rendering component for
isosurface extraction of the modeled voxel data, and fur-
ther mesh enhancement through shader programming. We
demonstrate how the interaction between these components
produce results comparable to real world caves, and show
that the solution is viable for video game environments. For
this, we present the findings of a user study we conducted
among indie-game developers and players, using our results. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/5464981
- author
- Mark, Benjamin ; Berechet, Tudor ; Mahlmann, Tobias LU and Togelius, Julian
- organization
- publishing date
- 2015
- type
- Contribution to conference
- publication status
- published
- subject
- conference name
- Foundations of Digital Games
- conference location
- United States
- conference dates
- 2015-06-22
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- eba6bc5f-c20b-467f-b30a-ce3a463c1566 (old id 5464981)
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-04 13:11:24
- date last changed
- 2025-04-04 14:57:30
@misc{eba6bc5f-c20b-467f-b30a-ce3a463c1566,
abstract = {{Procedural Content Generation in Games (PCG) is a thriv-<br/><br>
ing field of research and application. Recent presented ex-<br/><br>
amples range from levels, stories and race tracks to complete<br/><br>
rulesets for games. However, there is not much research to<br/><br>
date on procedural 3D modeling of caves, and similar en-<br/><br>
closed natural spaces. In this paper, we present a modular<br/><br>
pipeline to procedurally generate underground caves in real-<br/><br>
time, to be used as part of larger landscapes in game worlds.<br/><br>
We propose a three step approach, which can be fully im-<br/><br>
plemented using General-Purpose Computing on Graphics<br/><br>
Processing (GPGPU) technology: 1) an L-System to em-<br/><br>
ulate the expanded cracks and passages which form cave<br/><br>
structures in nature, 2) a noise-perturbed metaball approach<br/><br>
for virtual 3D carving, and 3) a rendering component for<br/><br>
isosurface extraction of the modeled voxel data, and fur-<br/><br>
ther mesh enhancement through shader programming. We<br/><br>
demonstrate how the interaction between these components<br/><br>
produce results comparable to real world caves, and show<br/><br>
that the solution is viable for video game environments. For<br/><br>
this, we present the findings of a user study we conducted<br/><br>
among indie-game developers and players, using our results.}},
author = {{Mark, Benjamin and Berechet, Tudor and Mahlmann, Tobias and Togelius, Julian}},
language = {{eng}},
title = {{Procedural Generation of 3D Caves for Games on the GPU}},
url = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/6067634/5464988.pdf}},
year = {{2015}},
}