Light-Guided Tree Modeling of Diverse Biomorphs

Creation of tree models faithful to light environment is an important task in computer graphics as well as in botanical research, such as horticulture and forestry. In this paper, we propose an approach to model virtual trees with constraints of light resources and tree morphological properties. By the allocation of received light resources, tree model parameters are estimated, including branching directions and branching sizes. The light energy is calculated by sampling the environmental space, so that the final architecture of trees could be modeled corresponding to its growth environments. Experimental results show that the proposed method create trees with architectures guided by light resources.