Terrain as volume and heightfield
My terrain work follows two different representations. VoxelTerrain V4 in Unity uses signed-distance fields and Surface Nets to edit a volume, including forms such as caves and overhangs. Founder Engine starts from a heightfield and concentrates on large landscapes, material distribution, ray-traced geometry and close-range displacement. Both involve deciding where detail is needed, but they have different constraints. I keep them together here because they show how the representation changes the editing problem: sculpting a volume is different from refining a surface, and a convincing landscape needs material coverage and stable geometry as well as a high detail count. The process includes untextured terrain, material tests and detail comparisons so those decisions remain visible.
SDF editing changes the field from which GPU-driven Surface Nets extracts the mesh. This supports terrain forms that cannot be described by a single height at each horizontal location. The work connects procedural construction and direct sculpting to the resulting surface, including how detail changes across regions.
Height and slope masks place material layers across the heightfield. Geometric displacement adds local relief, while road and river splines extend the same landscape workflow. I compare bare geometry with the material result to see whether a feature comes from the source height, the selected detail or the surface layer.
Earlier iterations, material tests and diagnostic captures. Select a topic to follow the work behind the selected results.
Surface Nets reconstructs a surface from a signed-distance field. A heightfield stores one elevation per horizontal position and refines geometry across that surface. The voxel mesher does not run inside Founder Engine; the two projects explore different terrain problems with different data and geometry pipelines.
Founder Engine terrain uses GPU detail selection, clustered ray-tracing geometry and micro-displacement budgets. I have investigated oversized patches, retained detail and recovery after movement alongside gaps in material masks. The diagnostic tools need to show which limit is responsible, so changing a geometry budget does not become a substitute for fixing the material.
VoxelTerrain V4 and Founder Engine terrain are separate implementations. Volumetric cave and overhang studies belong to the Unity work; the DirectX 12 landscape uses a heightfield.
NextTimberGEN