Applications
Scenery generators are commonly used in movies, animations and video games. For example, Industrial Light & Magic used E-on_Vue to create the fictional environments for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. In such live-action cases, a 3D model of the generated environment is rendered and blended with live-action footage. Scenery generated by the software may also be used to create completely computer-generated scenes. In the case of animated movies such as Kung-Fu Panda, the raw generation is assisted by hand-painting to accentuate subtle details. Environment elements not commonly associated with landscapes, such as or ocean waves have also been handled by the software.
Scenery generators in video games give a variety of benefits, due to their procedural nature. Large environments can be created for players to explore, while using little space to store the data. Certain games are also able to offer different kinds of landscapes that are constantly changing, allowing players a different experience between sessions. Alternatively, the content created by a scenery generator can replace scenery elements that would otherwise need to be manually created. Time and resources in the game's development cycle can be conserved by automating repetitive tasks, such as the generation of varied foliage. Virtual simulations such as non-commercial versions of America's Army also benefit from the use of scenery generators due to their need to provide realistic, predictable settings with emergent properties. Due to the role that scenery generation plays in many present-day video games, game engines such as OGRE or Unreal Engine 3 often include a means to generate scenery within their own packages.
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