2007, ‘Image-based tree modeling

Figure 1: Image-based modeling of a tree. From left to right: A source image (out of 18 images), reconstructed branch structure rendered at the same viewpoint, tree model rendered at the same viewpoint, and tree model rendered at a different viewpoint. In this paper, we propose an approach for generating 3D models of natural-looking trees from images that has the additional benefit of requiring little user intervention. While our approach is primar-ily image-based, we do not model each leaf directly from images due to the large leaf count, small image footprint, and widespread occlusions. Instead, we populate the tree with leaf replicas from segmented source images to reconstruct the overall tree shape. In addition, we use the shape patterns of visible branches to predict those of obscured branches. We demonstrate our approach on a variety of trees.