US Patent 7412362 River modeling

Systems and methods are presented for real-time realistic river modeling. In one implementation, when provided with the physical features of a modeled terrain, the systems and methods described herein automatically determine a watercourse route in relation to the terrain and calculate river borders. The systems and methods then calculate a surface structure for the river between the borders and map texture coordinates to the surface structure. The systems and methods apply textures at the texture coordinates to provide an animated, view-dependent representation of wave geometries for the modeled water surface including reflection, refraction, and Fresnel effects.