AutoBiomes: procedural generation of multi-biome landscapes

Abstract

Advances in computer technology and increasing usage of computer graphics in a broad field of applications lead to rapidly rising demands regarding size and detail of virtual landscapes. Manually creating huge, realistic looking terrains and populating them densely with assets is an expensive and laborious task. In consequence, (semi-)automatic procedural terrain generation is a popular method to reduce the amount of manual work. However, such methods are usually highly specialized for certain terrain types and especially the procedural generation of landscapes composed of different biomes is a scarcely explored topic. We present a novel system, called AutoBiomes, which is capable of efficiently creating vast terrains with plausible biome distributions and therefore different spatial characteristics. The main idea is to combine several synthetic procedural terrain generation techniques with digital elevation models (DEMs) and a simplified climate simulation. Moreover, we include an easy-to-use asset placement component which creates complex multi-object distributions. Our system relies on a pipeline approach with a major focus on usability. Our results show that our system allows the fast creation of realistic looking terrains.