Botanical Tree Image Generation

It may be true, as the poet said, that only God can make a tree, but through geometric modeling a computer graphics system can produce a remarkable likeness.

Abstract

The authors present botanical trees as models of biological objects, first by defining their developmental rules in a discrete grammatical form, then by defining them in continuous geometric forms. Having analyzed these models from several standpoints, they have developed an interactive synthetic tree manipulation system called the A-system. The A-system incorporates such constructs as leaves, shadows, and shades and can perform three-dimensional transformations of a tree. One of its applications is to assist with landscaping, which includes gardening and the design of street plants.