Improved Model- and View-Dependent Pruning of Large Botanical Scenes

• Published in: Computer graphics forum Vol. 30; no. 6; pp. 1708 - 1718
• Main Authors: Neubert, B., Pirk, S., Deussen, O., Dachsbacher, C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.09.2011
• Subjects: Algorithms; Botanical; Coherence; Computer graphics; Computer science; Geometry; I.3.3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation; I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism; level of detail; Mathematical analysis; Mathematical models; Optimization; precision/recall; Pruning; Recall; Reduction; Rendering; tree rendering; Trees
• ISSN: 0167-7055; 1467-8659
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8659.2011.01897.x

We present an optimized pruning algorithm that allows for considerable geometry reduction in large botanical scenes while maintaining high and coherent rendering quality. We improve upon previous techniques by applying model‐specific geometry reduction functions and optimized scaling functions. For this we introduce the use of Precision and Recall (PR) as a measure of quality to rendering and show how PR‐scores can be used to predict better scaling values. We conducted a user‐study letting subjects adjust the scaling value, which shows that the predicted scaling matches the preferred ones. Finally, we extend the originally purely stochastic geometry prioritization for pruning to account for view‐optimized geometry selection, which allows to take global scene information, such as occlusion, into consideration. We demonstrate our method for the rendering of scenes with thousands of complex tree models in real‐time.