Project InformationWhoStudent: David Cole Supervisor: Jon McCormack WhatModelling ecosystems with visual realism. WhyMany applications exist for reason for modelling ecosystems. But primarily the current methods that currently exist require user-based information determining the terrain formation and plant densities. Overtime plants compete against other plants and plants die when they begin to intersect (competing against another plant) and removed from the simulation. Eventually the simulation ends and the remaining plants are deemed the winners and will be rendered in the output images. With this approach a few problems exist, namely the growth of the plants and not allowing for plants to spread (seeding). Modelling of ecosystems can be applied to: Architectural and Design Conservation Video games How
For this thesis an ecosystem can be broken down into three main areas: Terrain Generation Plant Distribution and Growth Scene Generation Terrain generation is the formation of the land and the resource allocated within that land formation. The terrain generation is achieved based upon a fractal algorithm called “Midpoint displacement”. The resources are allocated based upon geological information (soil type, terrain height).
Plant Distribution and Growth is how the plants can spread across the terrain, the competition that occurs against between plants and the growth that happens to each plant over the length of the simulation.
Scene generation is the process of modelling and visually representing the terrain and plants, the plants are modelling using L-Systems. L-Systems (Lindenmayer Systems) is a string rewriting process that generates a sequence of characters based upon a set of production rules; once the string is interpreted it generates a 3D model of the plant.
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