Fast estimation of growth direction in virtual plants simulation

This paper deals with visual models of plants. A new method for fast determination of growth direction of the growing elements in artificial plants is presented here. The most important factor is the amount and direction of light incidenting surface of leaves in our simulation. We also take into account fluttering of the leaves in the wind. The method for the light calculation presented here is a significant extension of the algorithm presented in [1]. There are two important properties of the method which is based on sampling. The number of samples is independent to the number of elements in scene and every shadow in the scene is considered - not only shadows of the leaves but also shadows casted by the branches fruits, etc