Interactive simulation of large-scale forests in virtual reality applications

Abstract

We propose a hybrid geometry-image representation of trees, which consists of three hierarchies. In the lowest hierarchy, a collection of triangles are used to represent the trunk and salient branches. The finer hierarchy for the small branches is represented by Frond Map, a special type of textures. As the finest hierarchy, the leaves are clustered first and represented as a set of billboards. For each hierarchy, we generate a sequence of LODs (Level of Details). The appropriate level is selected on-the-fly. Smooth transitions between successive levels are accomplished using an image-space voting technique. Our representation facilitates the rapid modeling of trees, the dynamic simulation of trees swaying under wind as well as realistic simulation of large-scale forest scenes. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and high quality of our approaches. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.