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Picogen

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picogen
Developer(s)Sebastian Mach
Stable release
0.3 / July 20, 2010; 14 years ago (2010-07-20)
Repository
Written inC
Operating systemLinux, Windows
PlatformCross-platform
TypeScenery generator
LicenseGPL, Version 3, or newer
Websitepicogen.org
A canyon landscape with snow-like shader
An alpine landscape

Picogen is a rendering system for the creation and rendering of artificial terrain, based on ray tracing. It is free software.

Overview

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While the primary purpose of picogen is to display realistic 3D terrain, both in terms of terrain formation and image plausibility, it also is a heightmap-creation tool,[1] in which heightmaps are programmed in a syntax reminiscent of Lisp.[2]

The shading system is partially programmable.[3]

Example features

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Frontends

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Currently there is a frontend to picogen, called picogen-wx (based on wxWidgets). It is encapsulated from picogen and thus communicates with it on command-line level. Picogen-wx provides several panels to design the different aspects of a landscape, e.g. the Sun/Sky- or the Terrain-Texture-Panel. Each panel has its own preview window, though each preview window can be reached from any other panel.

Landscapes can be loaded and saved through an own, simple XML-based file format, and images of arbitrary size (including antialiasing) can be saved.

The heightmap panel

References

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  1. ^ Introduction to mkheightmap
  2. ^ Height Language Reference
  3. ^ Shaders in picogen
  4. ^ Preetham, et al. (1999). "A Practical Analytical Model for Daylight". Archived from the original on 18 April 2009.
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