Automatic artistic rendering of trees

• published: 17 Oct 2013
• views: 1

From the paper "Non-Photorealistic Rendering of Algorithmically Generated Trees" by Nathan Dudley and Cindy Grimm. In GRAPP 2007, the 2nd international conference on computer graphics theory and applications. This paper presents a novel rendering technique inspired by artistic approaches. Instead of trying to recreate a traditional medium, such as charcoal or watercolor, this approach is a mixture of both photo-realism and abstraction. Artists use a process of abstraction to provide structural information about subjects that do not have clearly defined shapes, such as groups of leaves in a tree. For example, an artist will use a color wash to first approximate a group of leaves. They then add detail on top of parts of this wash to indicate the presence of individual leaves. Similarly, we use an abstract shape that approximates the image of leaves clustered at the end of a branch. To prevent oversimplification, we add photo-realistic detail using a blending process. Interframe coherence is achieved both by smoothly interpolating the abstract shapes, and the continuity inherent in the photo-realistically rendered detail.