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

Interactive rendering of outdoor scenes is currently one of the most important challenges in computer graphics. This article presents a new method of real-time visualisation of trees and plants that combines both multiresolution modelling techniques and the dynamic generation of impostors. In our method, trees and plants are represented by continuous view-dependent levels of detail. This enables us to represent many complex tree models with variable resolution. The number of primitives rendered per tree is reduced according to their importance in the scene without loss of leafiness. Furthermore, trees are visualized using dynamic impostors that take advantage of the frame-to-frame coherence inherent in tree-dimensional scenes. The impostors avoid the need to redraw all the geometry of the scene continuously. This method permits visualisation of outdoor scenes with a high number of trees in interactive applications such as computer games or virtual reality, adapting the level of detail to the capability of graphic systems.