Multi-resolution tree motion synthesis in angular shell space

• Authors: Meng Yang;Bin Sheng;Enhua Wu;Hanqiu Sun
• Venue: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Virtual Reality Continuum and its Applications in Industry
• Year: 2009

Real-time tree animation in the virtual environment has received increasing attention in virtual reality. While previous works have mostly focused on producing a global tree dynamics from tree branches to leaves, which is typically time-consuming due to the complexity of models. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for modeling animation of the tree branches and leaves by frequency decomposition. We represent the tree branches, moving in a low frequency, by a hierarchical structure. Meanwhile, the motion of leaves is simulated in a high frequency in the shell space. Specifically, the animation of tree branches is modeled by introducing physically-based transformation matrix calculations (PTMC). In addition, we use an Euler-Bernoulli beam model and length correction to enable the bending effect of branches during animation. We synthesize visually believable motions of leaves in a high frequency based on shell dynamics, which is guided by the deformation of the shell space generated around the tree branches. In this way the high frequency vibration of leaves can be realistically generated in the near-branch space. Our approach is easy to be accelerated by GPU implementation, due to the parallel nature of shell dynamics, and a variety of reasonably natural-looking trees motions are demonstrated in the experimental results.