Better Mountain Generators That Aren't Perlin Noise or Erosion

IQ's Article: iquilezles.org/articles/moren...
A video about convolution: • But what is a convolut...
MUSIC
Colorful Flowers by Tokyo Music Walker | / user-356546060
And So It Begins by Artificial.Music | / artificial-music
Stay Chill by Sakura Girl | / sakuragirl_official
Late at Night by Sakura Girl | / sakuragirl_official
Memories of Spring by Tokyo Music Walker | / user-356546060
Licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)
creativecommons.org/licenses/...
promoted by www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
"Ticking" licensed from FesliyanStudios Background Music
SOUND
freesound.org/s/459981
freesound.org/s/146914
freesound.org/s/637821
freesound.org/s/446124
freesound.org/s/643876
freesound.org/s/208111
freesound.org/s/243400
freesound.org/s/32073
freesound.org/s/221769
freesound.org/s/212787
freesound.org/s/701459
freesound.org/s/194994

[@lugui]

"I researched not 3, but 2 techniques..."

[@pvic6959]

idk how i found this channel but its so entertaining and funny and informative

[@tcharlesleonardo1681]

when? where?

[@ChuckSploder]

@@tcharlesleonardo1681 2:39

[@imstillwater8039]

I got to that and it became reason I subbed lol

[@kalpamonx]

@@tcharlesleonardo1681 2:39

[@Test-iv4pm]

A whole not 3 techniques. Impeccable.

[@Fun_GPT]

I was like: Did I just hear that right?

[@Redditard]

Would u have clicked if they were whole lot 2?

[@kenshin1238]

what's this mean?face-turquoise-covering-eyes

[@tigranrostomyan9231]

Didn’t get what that mean..

[@tofu_3369]

@@tigranrostomyan9231 @kenshin1238 at the start he said "i researched not 3 but 2 techniques" which sounds odd

[@ThatRobHuman]

"Not three, but two" got me.

[@yodaman8015]

So tired of these copy paste comments

[@ThatRobHuman]

@@yodaman8015 good thing I actually typed it out since I was being genuine....

[@yodaman8015]

@@ThatRobHuman your comment is stale and used over and over is what I am saying.

[@ThatRobHuman]

@@yodaman8015 Feel better for having given your insightful $0.02? why are you under the impression that I care what your opinion is. Your neg should've stayed in the drafts, mate. Go bother someone else.

[@ThatRobHuman]

@@yodaman8015 thanks for sharing your opinion - the neg could've stayed in your drafts.

[@qwfp]

I love when I'm just about to reach a summit after climbing for days, and a talking dog pops out of snow, teleports me and my fellow platonic solids to a shapeless void and explains mountain generation algorithms to us!

[@pvic6959]

that was SO FUNNY. i loved it

[@dialog_box]

i misread this as "and a talking dog poops out of nowhere"

[@vahgarimo9864]

@@dialog_boxI read it as a talking poop dogs out of nowhere

[@matt92hun]

After the 17th time you kinda expect it annoyedly, but get a little disappointed when it doesn't happen.

[@mncc8327]

I love how you use a bulky robot for the brutal force method and a slim robot for the nerd method

[@Arnaz87]

Not just that, his bulky robot moves discretely (in small hard steps) and the nerd robot moves continuously (fluid motion).

[@mncc8327]

@@Arnaz87Never noticed that. Wow!

[@pespsisipper]

(they're dating)

[@Woodside235]

@@Arnaz87 Nice catch

[@ValeBridges]

​@@pespsisipperAnd they were roommates! (Oh my god, they were roommates)

[@Kimeraaidoru_gurifon_CH]

White dog talking to 3 shapes about mountain generation is something I never knew I needed to watch until now

[@SebastianLague]

I’ve never thought about using DLA for generating terrain, that’s a cool idea. Excited to experiment with it! Also, your visualizations and style are amazing, great work! :o

[@frederickmelvin8374]

hello random youtuber with 1.25m subs

[@clementbaron7323]

Greatness recognizes greatness.

[@kenshin1238]

hello random youtuber with 1.25m subs

[@JoshsHandle]

Thanks! It really means a lot to hear that from you, I'm a big fan of what you make.

[@pureay2700]

Can not wait for either of you two to make another video on the topic

[@AliasA1]

I've never been so quickly hooked on a video about noise algorithms

[@IrvanQadri]

Simply amazing how high quality KZbin edutainment have become. Cool plain explains

[@Splarkszter]

Agreed. That's why i keep a public list of the high-quality channels out there.

[@OrangeC7]

actually, these were mountain explanations, not plain explanations

[@aloysiuskurnia7643]

@@OrangeC7 not a plain explanation, but certainly an explanation on how to manipulate planes :^)

[@neatsketch]

@@SplarkszterMay I see your public list of high quality channels?

[@swaggus4304]

@@neatsketchi also need to know. Just commenting so i get notifications

[@SeanStClair-cr9jl]

I'm like 4 minutes in and I'm so engrossed in the information that I didn't even realize how much effort you put into these graphics. This is some top-notch shit, and it's refreshing to see something new added to this scene, right around when I feel like many people are finally familiar with the general trick of Minecraft-like terrain generation.

[@nomadshiba]

Minecraft uses a newer technique now, where they mix perlin noise with manually entered spline points, which gives them more control and more realistic and less repetitive terrain. Henrik Kniberg (minecraft dev), has a great video about it called "Minecraft terrain generation in a nutshell"

[@mnxs]

Thanks for the recommendation!

[@rysea9855]

This video rivals 3blue1brown in quality. Absolutely jampacked with information and visualization, while being explained perfectly. These sorts of videos are what give me the motivation to continue my study and hopefully one day be able to code stuff like this myself. I'll probably reference this video in the future, so I'll be back when that time comes. Absolutely amazing video, 10/10

[@chaosordeal294]

Yeah, it's like 3b1b but the math and science is accurate.

[@chemistcraft3007]

thats one hell of an opener, and i absolutely love it

[@earth4180]

Hey I'm only a couple minutes into this video but it's already really incredible, the visualizations, everything -- so so good!! Fantastic job. Can't wait to see more!

[@earth4180]

ok finished the video -- wow!! You covered so so many topics (a lot of which I recognize from my graphics classes) in such a short time, and you did it incredibly well!! This is a seriously impressive bit of educational content, man. That's absolutely awesome!

[@iantl2419]

Thank you, now I have an excuse to rewrite my entire terrain generator for the 4th time! YESS! I'm so happy about this! Seriously though, this is great.

[@crazyrocketguy4687]

The production quality on this is insane, I can't believe I am watching this for free. Instantly subscribed

[@Youwouldknowmebtnow]

that "not 3, but 2" is a golden defying expectations line.

[@hughjanes4883]

Finally, someone who thinks perlin looks ugly. Also I unintentionally did the gradient method in one of my own programs and I have a good optimisation tip, I stored the gradient function (an in the video was x/x+m) as a gradient at the bottom of a texture I was using in the rendering process, its a small performance improvement and probabally slower unless your allready using an image in the process, but if your gradient functions are more complex and expensive it could be ever so slightly faster. One downside was that scince it was stored in an image it had to use a byte to store its value so you only had a gradient "resolution" of 256 this was barely noticeable though.

[@DreadKyller]

I mean 16-bit images are a thing, so you could use a different image format and remove the 256 resolution limit. It's also worth noting that instead of an image you could store a more generic 2D array of values (Or if on the GPU a buffer).

[@hughjanes4883]

@@DreadKyller good ideas, i was loading an 8 bit image anyways so thats why I only mentioned 256, i should have made it more general

[@Pico52]

Thinking Perlin looks ugly is exactly why I'm here as well. This is a great video.

[@user-pj5oe6rb4i]

I believe that perlin CAN look nice, if you completely rewrote the algorithm. However, it sucks right now. Looks like something a computer generated. Oh wait, a computer DID.

[@hughjanes4883]

@@user-pj5oe6rb4i you are right, its great for making procedural textures, but im some contexts like world gen it really shows how ugly it is.

[@CrescentX3]

1:35 That sound design… it’s so subtle, but with good headphones, it really adds to the quality of the video!

[@mr.boloso8296]

This is exorbitating quality from a KZbin video. I may guess how you create all the animations, but It still blows my mind, I'd really like to know more. You're one of the best Computer Graphics content creators on platform, keep up!

[@cbhv4321]

Insanely high production value, very snappy, and good writing! Genuinely surprised your channel isnt bigger, i feel like im buying in before it skyrockets

[@BabulCNC]

You have to watch the Video 3 times, then KZbin allows you to see algorithm #3, using Simplex Noise, at the end - it's brilliant! Thank you ^^

[@ibiuld443]

inigo quilez is an absolute legend, everywhere i go i keep being led back to his work

[@ColinPaddock]

Is Indigo Q-Lez how it’s pronounced.

[@cheydinal5401]

I love how the little animations in your video not only look nice and mix things up neatly, but also show the viewer that "Hey, this guy really know what he's talking about with all this creating good-looking visuals stuff"

[@Higgsinophysics]

You don't even need to be interested in the topic to watch this video, you can watch it for the insanely talented made visuals

[@samk2407]

Im so hyped to see someone finally do better than the "it looks pretty good" of perlin noise

[@user-pj5oe6rb4i]

So true

[@hylkart]

As a terrain artist, the DLA approach really peaked (hah) my interest. Fractal Perlins just don't cut it, although indeed much more interesting than plain Perlins, they still have that "CGI" feel to them. I think the DLA approach offers a really solid base shape which you can tweak and augment further without a lot of hassle. Do you happen to know if such an algorithm is resource intensive and/or easy to code? An alternative method, which I think you could combine with Perlin and Voronoi cells, is to cut out rivers and valleys in a select area of your terrain. You'd have to somehow ensure the edges of your Voronoi cells all have the same elevation, so the water would flow to a common lowest point, but then you could (I think) do partial water simulation, cut valleys, and have great mountain shapes. If interested, I have a timelapse of such process on my channel! As for using plain old hydraulic erosion, imo that only works if you do a proper terrain simulation, so it doesn't appear feasible to me at the moment. You'd need different layers of rock to be simulated, as otherwise all terrain is eroded equally, and in the end it would still look artificial (just search "World Machine Mountain" and you will see the flowlines of the erosion and shapes all are similar).

[@supermuffinbros4797]

Just the best video quality ever. This is where I would obsessively gush over every stylistic, audio and animation detail I noticed, but that would take a **lot** of text just to tell everyone (especially the creator) what they already know. (the derivitive robots are just the best though)

[@GenesisRip]

Holy hell, this is a very good visualisation. Hope you keep this style of animation for future explainers, preferably shorter so it's not too onerous for you! Subbing for more : )

[@Officialjadenwilliams]

Incredible video, Josh. Not only was the multi-noise algorithms clear and easy to understand, but extremely entertaining. The production quality is fantastic, and it makes the content even more engaging. Looking forward to more videos like this. Subbed. 👍

[@CosmicHase]

Computer science video pls?

[@tonfilm]

Great video, thanks for making high quality educational content! I'm an experienced graphics programmer but didn't know about the gradient trick and DLA terrain... Until now!

[@hoteltoyota]

Your videos are by far some of the best on KZbin. You deserve so much more recognition than you get. I love your videos so much

[@ELEMENTLHERO]

I just stumbled onto this channel and the quality is amazing! Great job!

[@skeptiklive]

So glad this was in my recommendations - It was very well explained for any level of prior knowledge so it filled in any gaps I had without boring me when it covered the parts I was already familiar with. Well done, looking forward to more!

[@MajatekYT]

I wasn't expecting a video this high effort about random noise, but I'm pleasantly surprised. Subscribed. ❤

[@mySDK3333]

I like how they appreciate the view of summit more at the end of the video.

[@leviathan5792]

The animation's on this are just mind-blowing. Awesome video!

[@Saw-qv3bl]

I am an IB student from Spain and one of our asighnments to pass is to do a simplified version of a scientific paper on any subject, this video has helped me finnaly figure out what to write it on! Thank you so much!

[@cineblazer]

Incredible work as always - it's remarkable to me that you continue to improve your production quality with every upload!

[@Zach_Films]

This is a great balance of deep technical dive with accessible explanations and amazing visuals. It no doubt took ages, thank you and please do more!

[@samuelmediani]

Extraordinarily well done animations and precise explanations. Your channel is so underrated!

[@ImplodingChicken]

Incredible video. I've never done any terrain generation or even computer graphics work before, but I was hooked all the way through. As others have said the humor was witty and the visual choices (like the two robots at 7:05) were great, but I wanted to highlight a moment at 6:32. When you introduce and start explaining finite difference approximation, the immediate question that comes to mind for me as a viewer is "why not just make the difference as small as possible?" And immediately you have an extremely intuitive and expressive animation showing both the reason that doesn't work (the pixelated zoom-in) and what would happen if you did it. That detail could have taken 5+ minutes to explain, or could have just been skipped and left as an unresolved anxiety, but in 3 seconds and half a sentence I've already had my question answered before I even asked it, built quality intuition about what's going on, and feel comfortable that I've grasped the concept. Seriously top-tier stuff here.

[@Sopiro]

Awesome. Thanks for sharing your hard work. Stunning visuals!

[@AdmiralCorkington]

Wow incredible video!! I've never subscribed to a channel so fast. I'm staggered by amount of work you put into this explanation, and how easy it was to understand as a result! Looking forward to more of your work.

[@ArekusaSan]

I did not expect to finally understand how upscaling works so well on a video about generating mountain terrain. Everything else you explained made sense too, you do an excellent job at it!

[@monkeysfromvenus]

the amount of work put into these visuals is incredible

[@charless9653]

Dude, you make the math so approachable with these amazing visualizations! This is seriously top notch educational content.

[@satinxs8]

The amount of effort and detail you put into this video is admirable, thank you! You got me wanting to experiment with Perlin noise and mountains now 😁

[@OctagonalSquare]

This is incredible man! Both the content, and the visuals!

[@ryft_music]

excellent explanations touching on complex subjects without getting too much in the weeds and excellent visually descriptive animations, subbed

[@orestes_io]

Just found this channel. Instantly subscribed. Phenomenal explanations and incredible effort. Thank you!

[@skillerraptor8669]

I just saw your video in my inbox and I could swear your voice was familiar, till I noticed you also made the great video about Ray Tracing. Keep up the good work! You are entertaining and informative at the same time which makes listening to it much easier and more fun.

[@chronicenigma696]

The level of dedication and original graphics and visual communication is out of this world! GREAT video. You explain things well and your graphics help me fully comprehend the subject matter. Will be subscribing and following.

[@Brightgalrs]

The visuals on this video, and how tightly they sync with the narration, is astounding. Oh and the sound design, like those small chimes that play when one of the visuals has changed slightly. There's something special going on here.

[@stevemcwinboi914]

I love the editing and you explained the concepts really well. Hope to see more content of this type from you!!

[@Neurotypique]

It's always so cool to see information rich videos like this with an impeccable visualisation, that is not only clear but beautiful to look at! It must takes so much more time but it's so much better as a viewer, thanks for taking this time! The erosion lookalike technique is really interesting I can't wait to try that!

[@Omenvreer]

I'm so impressed that you researched 2 techniques instead of 3. Incredible!

[@jakob1536]

I love the sound effects. They really enhance the already stunning animations

[@shykj8892]

Intriguing subject and extravagant visualizations. Great work!

[@you_just]

this is literally my niche! i am a minecraft world generation nerd who has struggled with this exact problem, and i found the exact same gradient blog post you mentioned! great visualization!

[@papahemmy8587]

I love this channel so much. It’s all the little things you do. Like how the bulky orange robot is used to symbolize the brute force method. And the lean elegant robot represents the lighter, but more complex approach.

[@domorobotics6172]

One of the best and most curated video I’ve seen so far

[@clqrified]

Wow. Incredibly high quality video and very full of information. I hope to see many more in the future! Keep it up!

[@HappyLittleBoozer]

What a phenomenal video. The simple but precise visuals turn what would normally be a headache to learn into a pleasure. If you keep this up I'm sure you'll be swimming in subscriptions in no time.

[@the_sentient_youtube1247]

This may possibly be the best video I've ever seen, holy cow! Amazing work!! :D

[@axyl_]

Amazing video! CGI was amazing, and the explanations were super clear! I’m working on a terrain generator for my game, and I’ve gotten some new ideas after watching, thanks for making this!

[@officeryoda5262]

Keep up the godd work. The Quality of your videos is just unrivaled.

[@frisiaf6238]

Some of the best visuals I've ever seen in an educational video, great work!

[@ToadieBog]

You did a GREAT job on the presentation, which really made the topic even more interesting. Excellent!

[@xBanki]

This is probably the most creative technical explanation I've ever watched.

[@kehlery]

your explanation of gradients is one of the best i’ve ever seen. really impressive for a video where that isn’t even the main goal.

[@graysonlorenz1441]

Absolutely amazing presentation, I feel like I have a good enough overview to build either of these in pretty much any language I want, plus know how to dig deeper if needed. Quite possibly the best technical explanation I've ever seen in software.

[@sableraph]

Absolutely brilliant video! So well illustrated and beautifully explained.

[@appelnonsurtaxe]

I LOVE procedural generation and the quality of production got you an instant sub. I already knew quite a bit about terrain gen yet I learnt a lot from this video! I've always wondered how Minecraft generated multi-chunk structures, thought of one way they could do things (basically placing random points on a super scaled down world map) which actually just ended up a very convoluted implementation of cellular noise. Thanks for clarifying this!

[@alexyz9430]

Amazing video! I only wish you'd change the thumbnail to make it look more alluring? Your dog character in particular has been a really distinct signature of your channel (not to mention they look very adorable 🥺) and I know a lot of people will be more intrigued to click if they see them in the thumbnail. (Maybe put on something like the scene where they're explaining to the three regular polyhedra?) I really hope you have more viewers and supporters in the near future! ❤

[@EpicGamerScout]

Can confirm, clicked this video a few hours later because now there's dog :D

[@veganium98]

I can't imagine how much work went into this video... the visualizations and animations are stunning, incredible job!

[@mathewhenson4029]

This video is such great quality, you did such a great job! 🙂

[@claytonharting9899]

Im so glad youtube recommended this video to me! I’ll be going through your other videos now, this one was so good!

[@jeffbronson3696]

This is 3B1B levels of production quality and explanation. Fantastic work!

[@user-xi6by2we2i]

This is a genuinely brilliant video. The production value is great, but the explanations are excellent.

[@goosewithagibus]

This is an unreasonably well polished video.

[@iestynne]

The attention to detail in the visualizations is incredible. I'm a graphics programmer myself and I was delighted by how much explanatory weight your animations hefted (clarifying and fleshing out the breezy voice over). You have a real talent for visual elucidation. This seems like an insane amount of work per minute of video. I hope it is worth it for you, because this really is top tier educational material.

[@sebastianbitsch]

Stunning visuals, great explanations and an interesting topic. Thanks for sharing

[@MiScusi69]

This lesson is of immaculate quality! Kudos!

[@RaccoonEatingCacti]

This topic is one of my recurring obsessions. I was pretty sure that there was a secret third option involving finely tuned reaction-diffusion simulations with Gaussian blurring between sessions. The result ends up being similar to the DLA approach but can be done with just image processing. It is incredibly sensitive to the settings, parameters must change through the process to not destroy finer detail... not ideal to say the least! Your video provided a ton of inspiration, and I will be re watching it multiple times to really absorb all the possibilities. I don't really have a working knowledge of calculus but the application of derivatives to smooth out areas with a higher slope? That directly answers a question I have been wrestling with when using perlin noise. Thank you for making this video, and for explaining everything in such granular detail! It is an absolute treasure to me, and I'm sure to all the other procedural generation newbies out there.

[@mhsalex0014]

i was just curious about the algorithm at first because i have zero knowledge related to programming but man you made me sit and watched till the end thats crazy bro

[@ohnoitsaninja]

For such a simplistic approach, I really like the results of the diamond-square alg

[@viniciuskriegergranemann8150]

Hello Josh! You have an incredible channel. I will be using these techniques in my projects, thank you so much for your work.

[@sentinelav]

Instant subscribe for that awesome production value! 🔥 I was working on an algorithm a while ago that used simple texture reads to generate landscapes. You feed it tiling displacement maps and it repeats them at various scales to create realistic terrain. Worked pretty well! It was fast enough to displace an 8km x 8km terrain in realtime using Nanite in UE5.

[@SaloCh]

Man the visual alegories with the vfx here are soo good!!

[@georgezubat7225]

"Doggo of wisdom, what is your wisdom?" "Many people have dreamed of summiting the highest mountains, but there exists a strange sort of person that dreams of generating them instead."

[@meyegui]

My thoughts exactly 😂

[@watz8824]

This video quality is absolutely incredible

[@painovoimaton]

Some of the best explanatory visuals I've seen. I very much like procedural terrain generation but it can be done badly. I hope this helps aspiring (or experienced) developers make better things! Awesome video

[@erikringwalters]

This production value is incredible

[@evanchilson9829]

The animation, sound, graphic, and overall presentation quality is literally insane. I'm so impressed and I don't even do anything related to this information, but man was I fully engaged. Instant sub lmao

[@Mysda_]

Really great video, thank you for this! I played a lot with Perlin noise to generate sand in my last game. And the idea of reading a perlin image as the value of the slope instead of the value of the color is amazing. I'll have to figure out how to code that. I got sand dunes to work by substracting clamped perlin noise on my initial perlin texture, but thats super specific. I spent hours tweaking values to make it work

[@unusualfabrication9937]

Very well dictated and shown intuitively. Incredible work

[@dangoyette]

This is gorgeous, and very informative.

[@noel.friedrich]

This video is absolutely fantastic! Hope this gets a lot more attention man!

[@felix_alvarez]

Really good video man. The animations are, as always, so cool and clever. Hell of a lot of work behind this. Keep it going! :)