Computer Graphics Stack Exchange
Computer Graphics Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [height-field]

Questions about image-based height-field representations, commonly used to represent a terrain.

A height-field is a way of defining a surface with an image, where the co-ordinates of the image represent co-ordinates on a plane, and the intensity of the image at each point represents the height of the surface from the plane at that point.

It's a compact representation of 2.5D surfaces such as mountainous terrain, and is easier to create and modify in use than a polygon-based representation, but can't represent holes in the height field (such as a cave system or bridge).

Compare displacement map, which is essentially a height field on a smaller scale to represent microgeometry on a polygon mesh.

See also:

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What's the current state-of-the-art algorithm for ray-tracing height-fields?

There have been lots of papers over the years on different techniques for drawing height-field terrain in a ray-tracer. Some algorithms ray-march the grid directly (or via a quadtree); others transform the terrain into a polygon mesh and use a…
Dan Hulme
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Bump mapping a ray-traced sphere

I'm attempting to apply a height map to a ray-traced sphere. The height map is stored as a texture. I have the intersection point on the sphere $p$, and I compute the normal vector at that point $N = normalize(p - c)$, where $c$ is the center of the…
Walt Donovan
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Method for rendering heightmap from a 3D scene

I am looking for a method of rendering a heightmap from a 3D scene. The scene may consist of a terrain which is in turn generated from another heightmap, but will also have regular 3D objects. The generated heightmap should, so to speak, indicate…
user5314
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Finite difference wave equation shown in paper is wrong?

I'm trying to produce wave surface animations, and I came across this paper: Fast_Water_Animation_Using_the_Wave_Equation_with_Damping. In the paper they go to provide the following equation: At first I just blindly implemented this, but soon saw…
Krupip
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How to approximate the heightmap of processed wood?

In the above image, you can see that there is some slight variation of the height of each wood plank. These variations do NOT come from the wood texture itself, but from the way it was cut, i.e if a different tool had been used to cut the same…
Makogan
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How is this normals map supposed to work?

I have come across this image that's labelled a bump map to be used with a 3D model. It looks like this: In this map, which is an RGB map, it seems we have pixels whose normals face upwards shaded lighter, and normals pointing downward shaded…
Zebrafish
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Mitsuba builds targets with scons but throws "undefined symbol" error when trying to render scene

I am trying to implement a custom add-on for Mitsuba, but when I use the Heightfield I have defined in another function call(WaveBrdfAccel) in main.cpp it compiles without any problems but when I try to render the scene I get an error that says: …
entropy283
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