Abstract: The paper presents a modeling algorithm for generating terrain in virtual environment. Perlin noise is introduced as the generator of terrain height, which results in a 3D terrain height field of a given 2D terrain area. The terrain is continuous to some degree in virtue of the smoothness characteristic of the noise. By controlling the frequency and amplitude of Perlin noise and superposing more noise value, we can get diversified terrain with the complex work of manual geometry modeling avoided. 3D texture technology is used to map different textures on part of terrain with different heights to simulate diverse environment. A script language is designed to describe the terrain. The script can act as driving data to construct terrain quickly and conveniently in virtual environment application. It turns out that the terrain generated is realistic and that our algorithm satisfies the requirements of real time virtual environment system based on the general PC platform.

Key words: terrain generation, Perlin noise, 3D texture mapping, virtual environment