Botanical-Based Simulation of Fruit Shape Change During Growth

Abstract

Fruit growth is an interesting time-lapse process. The simulation of this process using computer graphics technology can have many applications in areas such as films, games, agriculture, etc. Although there are some methods to model the shape of the fruit, it is challenging to accurately simulate its growth process and include shape changes. We propose a botanical-based framework to address this problem. By combining the growth pattern function and the exponential model in botany, we propose a mesh scaling method that can accurately simulate the fruit volume increase. Specifically, the RGR (relative growth rate) in the exponential model is automatically calculated according to the user's input growth pattern function or real size data. In addition, we model and simulate fruit shape changes by integrating axial, longitudinal, and latitudinal shape parameters into the RGR function. Various defective fruits can be simulated by adjusting these parameters. Inspired by the principle of root curvature, we propose a deformation technique-based approach in conjunction with our volume increase approach to simulate the bending growth of fruits such as cucumber. Various experiments show that our framework can effectively simulate the growth process of a wide range of fruits with shape change or bending.