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Eliana Gargiulo
Software Development
Massive Procedural Planets with Dynamic Level of Detail
The topic of my thesis was the procedural generation and rendering of very large spherical planets , which the player can freely explore . In order to support this goal , I built a level of detail system which generates and renders nearby areas of terrain with progressively higher vertex density . Additionally , I built the system such that you can implement custom terrain generation functions and control the generation process with data , enabling the creation of many different planet types . I estimate that I spent 250 hours building my thesis .
I chose this project because I was interested in exploring these challenges , and because they are highly relevant to the games industry . More modern games than ever feature highly detailed and expansive open worlds . These games face not only the challenge of managing these massive open worlds on a technical level , but also of supporting designers with efficient and flexible systems for building these worlds . My thesis addressed both of these challenges , and more .
This project gave me the opportunity to explore a number of areas , including procedural generation , system design , and rendering . I had to balance the technical task of performantly managing large amounts of data with my creative goals of generating and rendering interesting and attractive-looking terrain .
64 SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT