Interactive Vegetation Rendering with Slicing and Blending

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Date
2000
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Eurographics Association
Abstract
Detailed and interactive 3D rendering of vegetation is one of the challenges of traditional polygon-oriented computer graphics, due to large geometric complexity even of simple plants. In this paper we introduce a simplified image-based rendering approach based solely on alpha-blended textured polygons. The simplification is based on the limitations of human perception of complex geometry. Our approach renders dozens of detailed trees in real-time with off-the-shelf hardware, while providing significantly improved image quality over existing real-time techniques. The method is based on using ordinary mesh-based rendering for the solid parts of a tree, its trunk and limbs. The sparse parts of a tree, its twigs and leaves, are instead represented with a set of slices, an imagebased representation. A slice is a planar layer, represented with an ordinary alpha or color-keyed texture; a set of parallel slices is a slicing. Rendering from an arbitrary viewpoint in a 360 degree circle around the center of a tree is achieved by blending between the nearest two slicings. In our implementation, only 6 slicings with 5 slices each are sufficient to visualize a tree for a moving or stationary observer with the perceptually similar quality as the original model.
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@inproceedings{
:10.2312/egs.20001004
, booktitle = {
Eurographics 2000 - Short Presentations
}, editor = {}, title = {{
Interactive Vegetation Rendering with Slicing and Blending
}}, author = {
Jakulin, Aleks
}, year = {
2000
}, publisher = {
Eurographics Association
}, ISSN = {
1017-4656
}, ISBN = {}, DOI = {
/10.2312/egs.20001004
} }
Citation