Fast Simulation of Realistic Trees

Trees in 3D interactive applications began mostly as textured billboards, scaled semi- transparent pictures that spun around their vertical axis to face the viewer. Those situations where vegetation began to play a stronger foreground role required higher fidelity, and simple geometric structures emerged. Although initially rudimentary and sometimes combined with textured subshapes, these new forms signaled a focus on increasing requirements for botanical structures. We have developed a method that uses separable projections and streamlined mechanics to efficiently simulate the motion of vegetation. The associated algorithm is about 15 to 2,000 times faster than recently published methods.