Animating real-time realistic movements in small plants

Much of the research involved in computer graphics is focused on creating realistic images and animations that mimic the world we see around us, as well as creating believable environments not from this world. Techniques for animating realistic water, smoke, fire, fog, and other natural phenomena have been extensively explored. It is only recently that powerful computer hardware has become available to achieve these realistic animations.Compared with other natural phenomena, animations of vegetation and foliage are relatively undeveloped. There are many instances where animations of vegetation and foliage are used in non real-time applications such as special effects in movies. Foliage in real-time applications on the other hand have usually been limited to simple textures and other techniques that do not represent realistic movements at all.We propose a method for rendering and animating small plants in real-time and in a realistic manner. These real-time animations will be suitable for many real-time applications such as games and realistic interactive virtual environments.