Planetary-Marching-Cubes

Developed originally for HelloPlanet

Planetary Marching Cubes (PMC) is an algorithm that allows the generation of a smooth sophisticated planet mesh.

When I am still an undergrad student, I have decided that my final year project would be a planet simulating game that could simulate a planet to the best of details for a game. Terrain is one of the key impactors to the simulation. River stems from mountains, plateaus may have a lower temperature and caves is where some animals like bats sleep. Very soon, I started to look into the method common for generating a planet. It seems that previous methods for generating planetary mesh mainly involve using a heightmap.

Although visually pleasant, the method does not permit the planet to contains features such as caves and cliffhangs. So, I look further in games like ECO. ECO uses a voxel engine to implement a Minecraft-like planet. It also looks very pleasant and allows the features such as caves and overhangs. But, the lack of smooth surfaces disturbs a perfectionist like me XD.

Using marching cubes is a good way to generate a mesh with smooth surfaces and complex features. However, if it is directly used for generating a planet, there will be sampling issues.

So, when I work on my FYP which I name HelloPlanet, I have taken a bit of time investigating on how to write an algorithm that could generate smooth planetary mesh with complex features like caves and overhangs. The result is what I call as Planetary Marching Cubes. Its results are shown below:

A technical paper has been written for PMC and will be submitted soon. You will be able to find the details there! The education paper on utilizing PMC for game-based learning could be found here. Likewise, the PMC code will be released soon as well.

You can give HelloPlanet, and therefore PMC a try, by downloading HelloPlanet's EXE (64bits windows only) below:

HelloPlanet EXE - Normal Version VR Version

HelloPlanet Video - Concept Video VR Demo Video

The EXEs above is only for trial only and is not part of the PMC open source project :)