This thesis focuses on creating an application for procedural generation and visualisation of a volumetric terrain using the OpenGL library. The terrain is considered to be mostly static, however with a possibility of modification of individual voxels. The project seeks a compromise between rendering performance and the aesthetics. The design is led in a way so that it could be further used as a foundation for a game. An emphasis is put on accelerating used methods on the GPU.

A procedural method is proposed to generate volumetric data for terrain using a surface height map and information about materials as input. In contrast to previous explored methods this approach takes advantage of the extensive research on surface terrain generation by adapting the material layers to the topology of the input terrain. The method allows the user to specify materials as stratified or eroded, which are generated differently: stratified materials are stacked to generate material layers while eroded materials accumulate on even terrain. We compare a thermal erosion method and an original approach that uses information about the slope of the terrain as a shortcut to generate eroded layers and performs significantly better. The advantages and drawbacks of each technique are explored and discussed. / En proceduell metod har framställts för att generera volymdata för terränger med hjälp av en höjdkarta samt information om terrängens material. Till skillnad från tidigare metoder har följande nyttjat den omfattande forskningen kring genererad terräng. Det här genom att anpassa materialens lager till terrängens topologi. Metoden tillåter användaren att specifiera materialen som stratifierade eller eroderade, vilket genereras olika: stratifierat material staplas och generar på så vis materialen i lager, medan eroderat material samlas på jämn terräng. Vi jämför en termisk erosionsmetod med originellt tillvägagångssätt som nyttjar användarinformation om terrängens lutning som en genväg till att generera eroderade lager samt presterar signifikant bättre. Fördelar samt nackdelar med båda teknikerna utforskas och diskuteras.

The aim of this work was to create a program to visualize voxel scenes in real time using ray tracing. It included the study of various methods of such a rendering with a focus on shadows. The solution was created using Unity engine and experimental packages Unity Jobs and Burst. The thesis presents multiple ray tracing passes and SVGF technique, that is used to turn a noisy input into full edge-preserving image. The final program is able to render hard shadows, soft shadows, and ambient occlusion at speed of fifty frames per second.