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Procedural Island Generation (III)

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Resulting terrain elevation with multi-scale noise layers and mountain peaks

This post continues from Part II, where we established the paint map foundation and mountain ridge system. Now we’ll add detailed noise layers, distance-based mountain peaks, and do blending to create the final terrain elevation.

Paint Map (recap)

Before applying noise layers, we start with the foundation established in Part I - the paint map that defines our base land/water distribution:

The paint map from Part I - our starting elevation values before noise enhancement

For visualization throughout this series, we’ll be using the magma palette from matplotlib, which I patched to artificially darken the ocean areas to highlight the coastline:

Paint map values sampled at the centroids of Delaunay triangles

Note that we’ll be sampling the paint map per Delaunay triangle (at each triangle’s centroid):

Central portion of the above image showing the per-triangle sampling more clearly

Remember that the paint map provides the broad strokes: positive values for land, negative for ocean, with smooth transitions between them. Now we’ll enhance it with noise layers to create realistic terrain detail.

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