Modeling and rendering of natural scenes with
thousands of plants
poses a number of problems. The terrain must
be modeled and plants
must be distributed throughout it in a
realistic manner, reflecting the
interactions of plants with each other and
with their environment.
Geometric models of individual plants,
consistent with their positions
within the ecosystem, must be synthesized to
populate the
scene. The scene, which may consist of
billions of primitives, must
be rendered efficiently while incorporating
the subtleties of lighting
in a natural environment.
We have developed a system built around a
pipeline of tools that
address these tasks. The terrain is designed
using an interactive
graphical editor. Plant distribution is
determined by hand (as one
would do when designing a garden), by
ecosystem simulation, or by
a combination of both techniques. Given
parametrized procedural
models of individual plants, the geometric
complexity of the scene is
reduced by approximate instancing, in
which similar plants, groups
of plants, or plant organs are replaced by
instances of representative
objects before the scene is rendered. The
paper includes examples
of visually rich scenes synthesized using the
system.