Procedural Natural Texture Generation on a Global Scale

Abstract: This Master’s thesis investigates the application of dynamically generated procedural terrain textures for texturing 3D representations of the Earth’s surface. The study explores techniques to overcome limitations of the currently most common method – projecting satellite imagery onto the mesh – such as insufficient resolution for close-up views and challenges in accommodating external lighting models. Textures for sand, rock and grass were generated procedurally on the GPU. Aliasing was prevented using a clamping technique, dynamically changing the level of detail when freely navigating across diverse landscapes. The general color of each terrain type was extracted from the satellite images, guided by land cover rasters, in a process where shadows were eliminated using HSV color space conversion and filtering. The procedurally generated textures provide significantly more details than the satellite images in close-up views, while missing some information in medium- to far-distance views, due to the satellite images containing information lacking in the 3D mesh. A qualitative analysis spanning six data sets from diverse global locations demonstrates that the proposed methods are applicable across a range of landscapes and climates.