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Question
How to generate terrain from a height map in opengl
Okay, so I've used the diamond-square algorithm to fill up a 2d array with height values.
Now what the heck do I do to actually render a terrain? I have no idea what to do, and everyone leaves this crucial step out of their tutorials. I want to know the simplest thing I could do to jump from the 2d array to the actual 3d terrain using c++ and opengl.
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by: InteractiveMindPosted on 2007-02-15 at 10:15:35ID: 18542504
The values in the 2D array will be associated with the vertical axis (generally the Y-axis), and the two components representing each element in the array are associated with the x and z coordinates.
So let's assume that you define and then fill this array with values (using the diamond-square algorithm):
double [][] terrain; // let's assume the dimensions are WxH
One way to render this in OpenGL is to simply pick out all of the 'squares' (that is, the elements: [i][j], [i+1][j], [i+1][j+1], and [i][j+1]), and then render them, using (say) GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP's.
A code example:
glBegin(GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP)
int i,j;
for(i=0; i<W-1; i++)
{
for(j=0; j<H-1; j++)
{
glVertex3d(i, terrain[i][j], j);
glVertex3d(i, terrain[i][j+1], j+1);
glVertex3d(i+1, terrain[i+1][j+1], j+1);
glVertex3d(i+1, terrain[i+1][j], j);
}
}
glEnd();
Chances are, you will need to adjust the proportions, using glScale*().