From Artistry to Automation: A Structured Methodology for Procedural Content Creation

  • Timothy Roden
  • Ian Parberry
Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, volume 3166)

Abstract

Procedural techniques will soon automate many aspects of content creation for computer games. We describe an efficient, deterministic, methodology for procedurally generating 3D game content of arbitrary size and complexity. The technique progressively amplifies simple dynamically generated data structures into complex geometry. We use a procedural pipeline with a minimum set of controls at each stage to facilitate authoring. We show two examples from our research. Our terrain generator can synthesize massive 3D terrains in real-time while our level generator can be used to create indoor environments offline or in real-time.

Keywords

Authoring Tool Content Creation Game Engine Game Developer Simple Undirected Graph 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. 1.
    Ebert, D., et al.: Texturing and Modeling: A Procedural Approach, 3rd edn. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco (2003)Google Scholar
  2. 2.
    Theodore, S.: Product Reviews: Darkling Simulations’ Darktree 2, Game Developer Magazine, pp. 6-7 (March 2002)Google Scholar
  3. 3.
    Wehowsky, A.: Procedural Generation of a 3D model of MIT campus, Research Project Report, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Graphics Laboratory (May 2001), http://graphics.lcs.mit.edu/~seth/pubs/WehowskyBMG.pdf
  4. 4.
    Kjolass, K.A.H.: Automatic Furniture Population of Large Architectural Models, Master Thesis, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT (2000)Google Scholar
  5. 5.
    Lecky-Thompson, G.: Infinite Game Universe: Mathematical Techniques, Charles River Media (2001)Google Scholar
  6. 6.
    Greuter, S., et al.: Real-time Procedural Generation of ‘Pseudo Infinite’ Cities. In: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Austalasia and South East Asia, p. 87 (2003)Google Scholar
  7. 7.
    Perlin, K.: An Image Synthesizer. In: Proceedings ACM SIGGRAPH, pp. 287–296 (1985)Google Scholar
  8. 8.
    De Loura, M. (ed.): Game Programming Gems. Charles River Media, Hingham (2000)Google Scholar
  9. 9.
    Perry, L.: Modular Level and Component Design. Game Developer, 30–35 (November 2002)Google Scholar

Copyright information

© IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2004

Authors and Affiliations

  • Timothy Roden
    • 1
  • Ian Parberry
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Computer Science & EngineeringUniversity of North TexasDentonUSA

Personalised recommendations