River modeling

A river modeling engine, comprising:

• a watercourse engine to determine a route for a watercourse to be modeled over a modeled terrain, based on, at least, physical features of the modeled terrain, the modeled terrain comprising non-fluid terrain;
• a border engine to calculate borders between the watercourse and the modeled terrain based on, at least, the route and the modeled terrain;
• a surface engine for calculating a surface structure model for the watercourse between the borders and for mapping texture coordinates to the surface structure model;
• and
• an illumination engine for applying textures at the texture coordinates to provide a view-dependent representation of wave geometries for the surface structure model including Fresnel reflection and Fresnel refraction effects associated with interactions between light and water.

A computer-implemented system for river modeling, comprising:

• means for automatically generating a river watercourse route over a model of a terrain, the terrain comprising non-fluid terrain;
• means for calculating river bank borders based on, at least, the model of the terrain;
• means for generating a view-dependent water surface model between the river bank borders;
• and
• means for generating real-time view-dependent lighting for the water surface model.