A physiological Plant Growth Simulation Engine Based on Accurate Radiant Energy Transfer

We present a new model for plant growth simulation, taking into account the eco-physiological processes driving plant development with unprecedented fidelity. The growth model, based on a physiological analysis, essentially simulates the internal function of the plant, and has been validated against measured biological data with excellent results. We show how to account for the influence of light through photosynthesis, and thereby incorporate the effects of a given plant's immediate environment on its architecture, shape and size. Since biological matter is controlled by water transpiration and received radiant enery, the model requires efficient and accurate simulation of radiant energy exchanges. We describe a complete lighting simulation system tailored for the difficult case of plants, by adapting state-of-the-art techniques such as hierarchical instanciation for radiosity and general BRDF modeling. Our results show that (a) our lighting simulation system efficiently provides the required information at the desired level of accuracy, and (b) the plant growth model is extremely well calibrated against real plants and (c) the combined system can simulate many interesting growth situations with direct feedback from the environment on the plant's characteristics. Applications range from landscape simulation to agronomical and agricultural studies, and to the design of virtual plants responding to their environment.

[1]  Richard L. Thompson,et al.  A computer graphics based model for scattering from objects of arbitrary shapes in the optical region , 1991 .

[2]  P. de Reffye,et al.  MODELLING PLANT GROWTH AND ARCHITECTURE : SOME RECENT ADVANCES AND APPLICATIONS TO AGRONOMY AND FORESTRY , 1998 .

[3]  M. Michalewicz.  Plants to ecosystems: advances in computational life sciences , 1997 .

[4]  Philippe De Reffye,et al.  Growth units construction in trees: A stochastic approach , 1991 .

[5]  Christoph C. Borel,et al.  The radiosity method in optical remote sensing of structured 3-D surfaces , 1991 .

[6]  T. Fourcaud,et al.  Mechanical analysis of the form and internal stresses of a growing tree by the finite element method , 1995 .

[7]  Winfried Kurth,et al.  MORPHOLOGICAL MODELS OF PLANT GROWTH : POSSIBILITIES AND ECOLOGICAL RELEVANCE , 1994 .

[8]  François X. Sillion,et al.  A Unified Hierarchical Algorithm for Global Illumination with Scattering Volumes and Object Clusters , 1995, IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph..

[9]  Philippe de Reffye,et al.  Simulation of the growth of plants. Modeling of metamorphosis and spatial interactions in the architecture and development of plants , 1998 .

[10]  Eric Jallas,et al.  Improved model-based decision support by modeling cotton variability and using evolutionary algorithms , 1998 .

[11]  Radomír Mech,et al.  Visual models of plants interacting with their environment , 1996, SIGGRAPH.

[12]  Kadi Bouatouch,et al.  Nested radiosity for plant canopies , 1998, The Visual Computer.

[13]  Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz,et al.  Development models of herbaceous plants for computer imagery purposes , 1988, SIGGRAPH.

[14]  Jim Hanan,et al.  Virtual plants - integrating architectural and physiological models , 1997 .

[15]  Philippe de Reffye,et al.  Calibration of a hydraulic architecture-based growth model of cotton plants , 1999 .

[16]  Christophe Godin,et al.  Measuring and analysing plants with the AMAPmod software , 1997 .

[17]  Jon G. Rokne,et al.  An Algorithmic Reflectance and Transmittance Model for Plant Tissue , 1997, Comput. Graph. Forum.

[18]  Jason Weber,et al.  Creation and rendering of realistic trees , 1995, SIGGRAPH.

[19]  Ned Greene,et al.  Voxel space automata: modeling with stochastic growth processes in voxel space , 1989, SIGGRAPH.

[20]  Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz,et al.  Animation of plant development , 1993, SIGGRAPH.

[21]  Prof. Dr. Francis Hallé,et al.  Tropical Trees and Forests , 1978, Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

[22]  François X. Sillion,et al.  Hierarchical Instantiation for Radiosity , 2000, Rendering Techniques.

[23]  Jari Perttunen,et al.  LIGNUM: A Tree Model Based on Simple Structural Units , 1996 .

[24]  Enhua Wu,et al.  Plane-Parallel Radiance Transport for Global Illumination in Vegetation , 1997, Rendering Techniques.

[25]  Jean Dauzat,et al.  Simulating light regime and intercrop yields in coconut based farming systems , 1997 .

[26]  R. Lathe.  Phd by thesis , 1988, Nature.

[27]  Marc Jaeger,et al.  Plant models faithful to botanical structure and development , 1988, SIGGRAPH.

[28]  A. Marshak,et al.  Calculation of canopy bidirectional reflectance using the Monte Carlo method , 1988 .