Real-Time Tree Rendering Inmaculada Remolar, Miguel Chover, Oscar Belmonte, José Ribelles, Cristina Rebollo

One of the most important challenges in real-time rendering of outdoor scenes is the representation of vegetation. This is due to the vast amount of polygons that are used to model vegetable species. This paper presents a new method of real-time visualisation of trees and plants that combines both the dynamic generation of impostors and multiresolution modelling techniques. Trees are rendered using dynamic impostors that take advantage of the frame-to-frame coherence inherent in three-dimensional scenes. Impostors avoid the need to redraw all the geometry of the scene continuously. Furthermore, the trees and plants are represented by multiresolution modelling. In this way, the level of detail can be adapted automatically and the cost of impostor generation will be reduced. This method deals independently with the trunk and the crown. The trunks are represented by a general multiresolution model. A special multiresolution model and an automatic simplification algorithm have been designed for foliage representation. This method permits visualisation of outdoor scenes with a great number of trees in interactive applications such as computer games or virtual reality, adapting the level of detail to the capability of graphics systems.