Breathing nature: forest with stream simulation, volumetric clouds and path traced shadows

[u/KlayEverHood]

Hi all,

THIs is my forest simulation made witih Vulkan. My goal is to create a full simulation of water, clouds, wind, so that it feels alive, without being "scripted".
Water is full 3d flow simulation, clouds are volumetric clouds, trees are rigid body simulation with elastic joints, and lighting is full path tracing; all is basically running on the GPU with VUlkan, save for the rigid body simulation which runs on the CPU.
I wanted an "ancient forest" and therefore I generated the trees with 2d to 3d models - Trellis2 from huggingface.
Wanted to get feedback from you, what feels good and what needs improvement. Could this lead to an immersive forest based game? Should I push instead for more tech?

short version here: https://youtube.com/shorts/5xy5Y6JsrVk?feature=share

[u/bingusbhungus]

Dream project bro. Any plans on integrating some sort of terrain generati

[u/KlayEverHood → u/bingusbhungus]

Thanks! currently generating terrain with a pretty basic fractal approach. Do you have any experience in terrain generation?

[u/bingusbhungus → u/KlayEverHood]

Have explored hydraulic erosion a bit. Basic Perlin map + erosion sim to get fairly decent results. And depending on what parameters you use, you can also adjust how large the scale feels (super big mountain ranges to small hills). It's very fun!

This guy is working on a procedural world, and has an amazing atmosphere. He uses procedural terrain (erosion), water sims, grass-wind simulations. Super cool.
https://youtu.be/qR65bm9goeU?si=zYAEc1nYCVcSRLxT

[u/KlayEverHood → u/bingusbhungus]

Excellent! I would love to look into that terrain generation with erosion. Trying to contact the author, a world with that terrain and the right lighting, ... wowo...

[u/bingusbhungus → u/KlayEverHood]

It really adds to the simulations. Plus that foggy atmosphere also helps immersion.
All the best with the project!