Rendering photorealistic terrains is a challenge in several ways. The renderer must robustly handle detail levels from small boul- ders to entire planets, sometimes even within a single frame. It must handle surfaces that are displaced very heavily by shaders and allow the artists a large degree of control over them. Lastly, it must be able to output highly detailed images and animations with po- tentially very large amounts of motion blur, all at film resolution.
This sketch presents the foundation of a terrain rendering system that has been used in feature films such as Star Trek: Nemesis and The Missing. Features include a novel texture antialiasing solution, efficient motion blur rendering, automatic triangle-level LOD inte- grated with a modular shader architecture.
Robust Rendering of High Resolution Terrain
March 20, 2010
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