Better Mountain Generators That Aren't Perlin Noise or Erosion 

"I researched not 3, but 2 techniques..."

A whole not 3 techniques. Impeccable.

I love when I'm just about to reach a summit after climbing for days, and a talking dog pops out of snow, teleports me and my fellow platonic solids to a shapeless void and explains mountain generation algorithms to us!

"Not three, but two" got me.

I love how you use a bulky robot for the brutal force method and a slim robot for the nerd method

I’ve never thought about using DLA for generating terrain, that’s a cool idea. Excited to experiment with it! Also, your visualizations and style are amazing, great work! :o

White dog talking to 3 shapes about mountain generation is something I never knew I needed to watch until now

I've never been so quickly hooked on a video about noise algorithms

Simply amazing how high quality RU-vid edutainment have become. Cool plain explains

Minecraft uses a newer technique now, where they mix perlin noise with manually entered spline points, which gives them more control and more realistic and less repetitive terrain. Henrik Kniberg (minecraft dev), has a great video about it called "Minecraft terrain generation in a nutshell"

I'm like 4 minutes in and I'm so engrossed in the information that I didn't even realize how much effort you put into these graphics. This is some top-notch shit, and it's refreshing to see something new added to this scene, right around when I feel like many people are finally familiar with the general trick of Minecraft-like terrain generation.

This video rivals 3blue1brown in quality. Absolutely jampacked with information and visualization, while being explained perfectly. These sorts of videos are what give me the motivation to continue my study and hopefully one day be able to code stuff like this myself. I'll probably reference this video in the future, so I'll be back when that time comes. Absolutely amazing video, 10/10

thats one hell of an opener, and i absolutely love it

Thank you, now I have an excuse to rewrite my entire terrain generator for the 4th time! YESS! I'm so happy about this! Seriously though, this is great.

Hey I'm only a couple minutes into this video but it's already really incredible, the visualizations, everything -- so so good!! Fantastic job. Can't wait to see more!

Finally, someone who thinks perlin looks ugly. Also I unintentionally did the gradient method in one of my own programs and I have a good optimisation tip, I stored the gradient function (an in the video was x/x+m) as a gradient at the bottom of a texture I was using in the rendering process, its a small performance improvement and probabally slower unless your allready using an image in the process, but if your gradient functions are more complex and expensive it could be ever so slightly faster. One downside was that scince it was stored in an image it had to use a byte to store its value so you only had a gradient "resolution" of 256 this was barely noticeable though.

The production quality on this is insane, I can't believe I am watching this for free. Instantly subscribed

that "not 3, but 2" is a golden defying expectations line.

This is exorbitating quality from a RU-vid video. I may guess how you create all the animations, but It still blows my mind, I'd really like to know more. You're one of the best Computer Graphics content creators on platform, keep up!

1:35 That sound design… it’s so subtle, but with good headphones, it really adds to the quality of the video!

inigo quilez is an absolute legend, everywhere i go i keep being led back to his work

You have to watch the Video 3 times, then RU-vid allows you to see algorithm #3, using Simplex Noise, at the end - it's brilliant! Thank you ^^

Insanely high production value, very snappy, and good writing! Genuinely surprised your channel isnt bigger, i feel like im buying in before it skyrockets

Incredible video, Josh. Not only was the multi-noise algorithms clear and easy to understand, but extremely entertaining. The production quality is fantastic, and it makes the content even more engaging. Looking forward to more videos like this. Subbed. 👍

Great video, thanks for making high quality educational content! I'm an experienced graphics programmer but didn't know about the gradient trick and DLA terrain... Until now!

Im so hyped to see someone finally do better than the "it looks pretty good" of perlin noise

Holy hell, this is a very good visualisation. Hope you keep this style of animation for future explainers, preferably shorter so it's not too onerous for you! Subbing for more : )

Just the best video quality ever. This is where I would obsessively gush over every stylistic, audio and animation detail I noticed, but that would take a **lot** of text just to tell everyone (especially the creator) what they already know. (the derivitive robots are just the best though)

The animation's on this are just mind-blowing. Awesome video!

All of this and still 60k subs?! You are well underrated! Keep it up!

I just stumbled onto this channel and the quality is amazing! Great job!

I wasn't expecting a video this high effort about random noise, but I'm pleasantly surprised. Subscribed. ❤

this is literally my niche! i am a minecraft world generation nerd who has struggled with this exact problem, and i found the exact same gradient blog post you mentioned! great visualization!

Your videos are by far some of the best on RU-vid. You deserve so much more recognition than you get. I love your videos so much

Extraordinarily well done animations and precise explanations. Your channel is so underrated!

I am an IB student from Spain and one of our asighnments to pass is to do a simplified version of a scientific paper on any subject, this video has helped me finnaly figure out what to write it on! Thank you so much!

Intriguing subject and extravagant visualizations. Great work!

Dude, you make the math so approachable with these amazing visualizations! This is seriously top notch educational content.

Incredible work as always - it's remarkable to me that you continue to improve your production quality with every upload!

the amount of work put into these visuals is incredible

I love the sound effects. They really enhance the already stunning animations

I love the editing and you explained the concepts really well. Hope to see more content of this type from you!!

I can't imagine how much work went into this video... the visualizations and animations are stunning, incredible job!

So glad this was in my recommendations - It was very well explained for any level of prior knowledge so it filled in any gaps I had without boring me when it covered the parts I was already familiar with. Well done, looking forward to more!

Absolutely brilliant video! So well illustrated and beautifully explained.

Awesome. Thanks for sharing your hard work. Stunning visuals!

excellent explanations touching on complex subjects without getting too much in the weeds and excellent visually descriptive animations, subbed

Incredible video. I've never done any terrain generation or even computer graphics work before, but I was hooked all the way through. As others have said the humor was witty and the visual choices (like the two robots at 7:05) were great, but I wanted to highlight a moment at 6:32. When you introduce and start explaining finite difference approximation, the immediate question that comes to mind for me as a viewer is "why not just make the difference as small as possible?" And immediately you have an extremely intuitive and expressive animation showing both the reason that doesn't work (the pixelated zoom-in) and what would happen if you did it. That detail could have taken 5+ minutes to explain, or could have just been skipped and left as an unresolved anxiety, but in 3 seconds and half a sentence I've already had my question answered before I even asked it, built quality intuition about what's going on, and feel comfortable that I've grasped the concept. Seriously top-tier stuff here.

I did not expect to finally understand how upscaling works so well on a video about generating mountain terrain. Everything else you explained made sense too, you do an excellent job at it!

The visuals on this video, and how tightly they sync with the narration, is astounding. Oh and the sound design, like those small chimes that play when one of the visuals has changed slightly. There's something special going on here.

The amount of effort and detail you put into this video is admirable, thank you! You got me wanting to experiment with Perlin noise and mountains now 😁

It's always so cool to see information rich videos like this with an impeccable visualisation, that is not only clear but beautiful to look at! It must takes so much more time but it's so much better as a viewer, thanks for taking this time! The erosion lookalike technique is really interesting I can't wait to try that!

Stunning visuals, great explanations and an interesting topic. Thanks for sharing

One of the best and most curated video I’ve seen so far

Some of the best visuals I've ever seen in an educational video, great work!

This is incredible man! Both the content, and the visuals!

Keep up the godd work. The Quality of your videos is just unrivaled.

Wow incredible video!! I've never subscribed to a channel so fast. I'm staggered by amount of work you put into this explanation, and how easy it was to understand as a result! Looking forward to more of your work.

This is such an astoundingly well-made video. Clean, concise, understandable with exactly the needed amount of detail to understand the subject without drowning. And the production of the video itself is incredible too! I'll have to watch a second time just because I really want to focus on exactly what has been done mechanically to both animate the video as well as how it works together with the VO to help convey the message better.

Just found this channel. Instantly subscribed. Phenomenal explanations and incredible effort. Thank you!

Wow. Incredibly high quality video and very full of information. I hope to see many more in the future! Keep it up!

Im so glad youtube recommended this video to me! I’ll be going through your other videos now, this one was so good!

This is a genuinely brilliant video. The production value is great, but the explanations are excellent.

I love this channel so much. It’s all the little things you do. Like how the bulky orange robot is used to symbolize the brute force method. And the lean elegant robot represents the lighter, but more complex approach.

The animations are incredible and help a ton understanding these concepts

Amazing video! CGI was amazing, and the explanations were super clear! I’m working on a terrain generator for my game, and I’ve gotten some new ideas after watching, thanks for making this!

You don't even need to be interested in the topic to watch this video, you can watch it for the insanely talented made visuals

This may be the most pleasantly animated video I've watched in a very long time. Incredibly good animation, sir.

Absolutely excellent explaination and visuals, loving it

Really amazing video, and incredibly well made for a channel of this size! I hope to see more cool stuff from you in the future

This is probably the most creative technical explanation I've ever watched.

The animation, sound, graphic, and overall presentation quality is literally insane. I'm so impressed and I don't even do anything related to this information, but man was I fully engaged. Instant sub lmao

This is a great balance of deep technical dive with accessible explanations and amazing visuals. It no doubt took ages, thank you and please do more!

What a phenomenal video. The simple but precise visuals turn what would normally be a headache to learn into a pleasure. If you keep this up I'm sure you'll be swimming in subscriptions in no time.

This video is such great quality, you did such a great job! 🙂

Man the visual alegories with the vfx here are soo good!!

I'm so impressed that you researched 2 techniques instead of 3. Incredible!

You did a GREAT job on the presentation, which really made the topic even more interesting. Excellent!

This video is absolutely fantastic! Hope this gets a lot more attention man!

This is 3B1B levels of production quality and explanation. Fantastic work!

Instant subscribe for that awesome production value! 🔥 I was working on an algorithm a while ago that used simple texture reads to generate landscapes. You feed it tiling displacement maps and it repeats them at various scales to create realistic terrain. Worked pretty well! It was fast enough to displace an 8km x 8km terrain in realtime using Nanite in UE5.

Your videos are sooo pretty and well made! I love it.

This is so cool! Thanks for the high-quality content!

The level of dedication and original graphics and visual communication is out of this world! GREAT video. You explain things well and your graphics help me fully comprehend the subject matter. Will be subscribing and following.

Hello Josh! You have an incredible channel. I will be using these techniques in my projects, thank you so much for your work.

This may possibly be the best video I've ever seen, holy cow! Amazing work!! :D

this is beautiful, it scratches my brain the right way

This is amazing, and it gave me a great push to decide how to implement terrain generation in my game

All of the visuals in this video are so well done. I found myself watching some scenes over and over just to track the dog's mouth with the narration. It's impeccable how well animated this is!

This is gorgeous, and very informative.

I've been fascinated with terrain generation for decades now, really cool to see visualizations of the various formulas in use. Channel name checks out.

I'm shocked you don't have more subscribers. The production quality on this is immaculate

I just saw your video in my inbox and I could swear your voice was familiar, till I noticed you also made the great video about Ray Tracing. Keep up the good work! You are entertaining and informative at the same time which makes listening to it much easier and more fun.

Really good video man. The animations are, as always, so cool and clever. Hell of a lot of work behind this. Keep it going! :)

For such a simplistic approach, I really like the results of the diamond-square alg

The quality on this is crazy. Subscribing after one vid because you deserve it

I really like your presentation. Looks great!

super high quality visuals i love it, very well put together video :)

This was amazingly beautiful. Thank you

Literally my new favorite channel!