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DeadWood: Including Disturbance and Decay in the Depiction of Digital Nature

Authors:

Adrien Peytavie,

Eric GalinAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Graphics, Volume 43, Issue 2

Article No.: 21, Pages 1 - 19

https://doi.org/10.1145/3641816

Published: 14 February 2024 Publication History

Abstract

The creation of truly believable simulated natural environments remains an unsolved problem in Computer Graphics. This is, in part, due to a lack of visual variety. In nature, apart from variation due to abiotic and biotic growth factors, a significant role is played by disturbance events, such as fires, windstorms, disease, and death and decay processes, which give rise to both standing dead trees (snags) and downed woody debris (logs). For instance, snags constitute on average 10% of unmanaged forests by basal area, and logs account for 2\(\frac{1}{2}\) times this quantity.

While previous systems have incorporated individual elements of disturbance (e.g., forest fires) and decay (e.g., the formation of humus), there has been no unifying treatment, perhaps because of the challenge of matching simulation results with generated geometric models.

In this paper, we present a framework that combines an ecosystem simulation, which explicitly incorporates disturbance events and decay processes, with a model realization process, which balances the uniqueness arising from life history with the need for instancing due to memory constraints. We tested our hypothesis concerning the visual impact of disturbance and decay with a two-alternative forced-choice experiment (n = 116). Our findings are that the presence of dead wood in various forms, as snags or logs, significantly improves the believability of natural scenes, while, surprisingly, general variation in the number of model instances, with up to 8 models per species, and a focus on disturbance events, does not.

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Cited By

Meng QHuai YWang XLi ZZhang RNie X(2025)Three dimensional forest dynamic evolution based on hydraulic erosion and forest fire disturbanceComputers & Graphics10.1016/j.cag.2024.104152126(104152)Online publication date: Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2024.104152
Jain AKerbl BGain JFinley BCordonnier G(2024)FastFlow: GPU Acceleration of Flow and Depression Routing for Landscape SimulationComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1524343:7Online publication date: 24-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.15243

Index Terms

DeadWood: Including Disturbance and Decay in the Depiction of Digital Nature
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Computer graphics
    1. Shape modeling

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Graphics

ACM Transactions on Graphics Volume 43, Issue 2

April 2024

199 pages

EISSN:1557-7368

DOI:10.1145/3613549

Editor:
Carol O'Sullivan
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

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Publication History

Published: 14 February 2024

Online AM: 23 January 2024

Accepted: 03 January 2024

Revised: 13 December 2023

Received: 28 October 2022

Published in TOG Volume 43, Issue 2

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Agence Nationale de la Recherche (France), by the National Research Foundation of South Africa
Maria Zambrano fellowship by Ministerio de Universidades (Spain)

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Cited By

Meng QHuai YWang XLi ZZhang RNie X(2025)Three dimensional forest dynamic evolution based on hydraulic erosion and forest fire disturbanceComputers & Graphics10.1016/j.cag.2024.104152126(104152)Online publication date: Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2024.104152
Jain AKerbl BGain JFinley BCordonnier G(2024)FastFlow: GPU Acceleration of Flow and Depression Routing for Landscape SimulationComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1524343:7Online publication date: 24-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.15243

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