Real-time rendering and simulation of trees and snow
Tree models created by an industry used package are exported and the structure extracted in order to procedurally regenerate the geometric mesh, addressing the limitations of the application's standard output. The structure, once extracted, is used to fully generate a high quality skeleton for the tree, individually representing each section in every branch to give the greatest achievable level of freedom of deformation and animation. Around the generated skeleton, a new geometric mesh is wrapped using a single, continuous surface resulting in the removal of intersection based render artefacts. Surface smoothing and enhanced detail is added to the model dynamically using the GPU enhanced tessellation engine. A real-time snow accumulation system is developed to generate snow cover on a dynamic, animated scene. Occlusion techniques are used to project snow accumulating faces and map exposed areas to applied accumulation maps in the form of dynamic textures. Accumulation maps are xed to applied surfaces, allowing moving objects to maintain accumulated snow cover. Mesh generation is performed dynamically during the rendering pass using surface o�setting and tessellation to enhance required detail.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations