Procedural Planet (Part 1)

     This research topic is part of a project with a more ambitious goal: to generate a whole coherent and functional solar system procedurally. At start, the planets will be quite simple and on a small scale and I eventually plan to be able to generate a complete environment (flora and fauna, atmosphere, ...) to a more realistic level than the game "Spore" and that would be similar to No Man's sky (at a much smaller level of course :p).

Perlin Noise :

     Perlin noise is a type of Gradient noise used, among others,  to generate procedural texture with a visual effect that increases the apparent realism in image synthesis. The function has a pseudo-random appearance, yet its visual details are of equal size (see picture). This property allows the texture to be easily controllable. Multiple copies zoomed Perlin noise can be inserted into mathematical expressions to create a variety of procedural textures.

Example of generated terrain with perlin noise:

Animation of the surface of an IcoSphere:

To work smoothly and evenly on all parts of a sphere, it is best to avoid UV-mapping configured  meshes (irregular meshes) and use a sphere made ​​by subdividing an icosahedron triangles.

Here is an initial test applying some modulation on the surface of a sphere with few meshes and low noise :

Now with the maximum number of vertices in unity (and coloring meshes iteratively to determine how the surfaces are ordered in the object):

The reliefs generated surface are quite promising and many potential to generate noise perlin settings offer a variety of behaviors and patterns. However, the level of detail is unsatisfactory and we are still quite far from having a realistic surface.