Many years ago on a flight from New York to Los Angeles, I flew over the Grand Canyon. From that angle, I saw the tributary canyons and how they widened and meandered as they met the main canyon. As a computer programmer, I felt that there were principles that I could model, and that I could generate interesting images.
My computer at the time was pretty primitive compared to today’s offerings, but I made a program that allowed me to generate a simple 3D map with different colors based on elevation. The picture below is a from a more recent descendant of that program.
Today’s program is more complex, but it uses the same basic principles. The first step is to generate a grid of numbers, representing elevations. The numbers next to each other shouldn’t vary very much, otherwise the landscape is unrealistic.
Turning this grid into a picture is then a geometry problem. My projection adds some small touches, such as coloring the left and right sides of a hill slightly differently to give the illusion of shadow. The light “in the distance” is different from the light nearby.
Expanding on these principles, I should be able to create a landscape where the background disappears into the fog. Future effort.
Here’s a little bit more of “Acadia”.
Daring Dayhikes 