Question

For a project, I’m doing creation of planets in 3D space, based around a center “homeworld”, that are randomly generated in all directions from the origin.

I’ve looked at procedural generation and Perlin noise, but I couldn’t find a decent way to make them applicable, but I’m new to randomized generation of any kind.

Any good starting points for an algorithm for 3D-point generation, centered around the origin, preferably based on a seed (so the same seed makes the same universe).

Thanks!

Answer 1

Try using a set of different random numbers rather than trying for a specific algorithm to do this with a single seed.

first one is 1-360 is the rotation around the y axis
second one is 1-180 is the deviation from the y axis (wobble)
third one is 1-<really big  number> is the distance from your centre point (homeworld)
fourth (optional) one is to randomize the radius of the planet
fifth (optional) is to randomize the colour of the object

To plot your planet then it’s just some simple trigonometry to work out the location in 3d space (x,y,z) from your origin (homeworld).

And so long as your seed values for each are the same you will be able to generate a very large planet space.

If you want to do this with a single seed, then use that seed to generate ‘random’ seed numbers for all the subsequent random number generators.