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