3.1 Generating mountains simultaneously with river

Prusinkiewicz and Hammel [11] use context sensitive rewriting processes based on a random midpoint displacement method [9] on a triangular grid. Their method creates one non-branching river as result of context sensitive L-system [12] operating on a set of triangles.

  
Figure 5: Production for generating the river curve in Bacus-Naur form. Arrows signify the direction of river curve.

The productions for generating model of river contain two types of triangles: and . Triangles differ from in such a way that through goes a river. The edges of are labeled entry ,exit and neutral . The production predecessor is just triangle . Each production subdivides the triangle into four smaller triangles and includes the following constrains (see Figure 5):

• The entry edge of the predecessor is subdivided into an entry edge and a neutral edge.
• The exit edge of the predecessor is subdivided into an exit edge and the neutral edge.
• The neutral edge of the predecessor is subdivided into two neutral edges.

The predecessor and the successor can be rotated, reflected and scaled before every application. The construction of the river starts from the triangle having one entry, one exit, and one neutral edge. The rewriting process is repeated recursively until required level of detail is reached. We can see in the Figure 6 how this method works.

  
Figure 6: Course of generating river.