A Procedural Model for Diverse Tree Species

The modeling of trees represents a unique and classical challenge in computer graphics. Models of 3D trees must express the form, complexity, structure, growth and diversity of real trees. Presently the most common methods for the modeling of 3D trees include a) user-based creative modeling, b) direct geometric capture such as LIDAR and photogrammetry, or c) indirect methods such as machine learning from images. These techniques often require significant human effort, large amounts of data, considerable computation resources, or any of the above. While there are methods that consider the direct procedural generation of trees, current models often require some human supervision to focus on naturally plausible variants. Instead, our approach is to construct a botanically-inspired, harmonic, procedural model for trees which directly produces realistic yet diverse trees.