O. Stava, S. Pirk, J. Kratt, B. Chen, R. Měch, O Deussen, B. Benes, Inverse Procedural Modeling of Trees, Computer Graphics Forum, 2014 and Eurographics, 2015

Abstract:

Procedural tree models have been popular in computer graphics for their ability to generate a variety of output trees from a set of input parameters and to simulate plant interaction with the environment for a realistic placement of trees in virtual scenes. However, defining such models and their parameters is a difficult task. We propose an inverse modeling approach for stochastic trees that takes polygonal tree models as input and estimates the parameters of a procedural model so that it produces trees similar to the input. Our framework is based on a novel parametric model for tree generation and uses Monte Carlo Markov Chains to find the optimal set of parameters. We demonstrate our approach on a variety of input models obtained from different sources, such as interactive modeling systems, reconstructed scans of real trees, and developmental models.

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Bibtex: 

@article {CGF:CGF12282,
author   = {Stava, O. and Pirk, S. and Kratt, J. and Chen, B. 
            and Mech, R. and Deussen, O. and Benes, B.},
title    = {Inverse Procedural Modelling of Trees},
journal  = {Computer Graphics Forum},
issn     = {1467-8659},
url      = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cgf.12282},
doi      = {10.1111/cgf.12282},
pages    = {n/a--n/a},
year     = {2014},
keywords = {mesh generation, biological modeling, natural phenomena, 
            I.3.5 [Computer Graphics]: Computational Geometry and 
            Object Modelling; I.3.6 [Computer Graphics]: Methodology 
            and Techniques Interaction Techniques I.6.8 [Simulation and 
            Modelling]: Types of Simulation Visual},
}