Generating Stochastic Wall Patterns On-the-fly with Wang Tiles

Abstract

The game and movie industries always face the challenge of reproducing materials. This problem is tackled by combining illumination models and various textures (painted or procedural patterns). Generating stochastic wall patterns is crucial in the creation of a wide range of backgrounds (castles, temples, ruins...). A specific Wang tile set was introduced previously to tackle this problem, in an iterative fashion. However, long lines may appear as visual artifacts. We use this tile set in a new on-the-fly procedure to generate stochastic wall patterns. For this purpose, we introduce specific hash functions implementing a constrained Wang tiling. This technique makes possible the generation of boundless textures while giving control over the maximum line length. The algorithm is simple and easy to implement, and the wall structure we get from the tiles allows to achieve visuals that reproduce all the small details of artist painted walls.