This is amazing. Now I'm imagining the ability to simulate less-than-ideal conditions for tree growth. Placing the tree next to a building or on a hill or culling branches at certain stages in its life to see what happens next, etc.
I think my overall thought is: we see plenty of nice looking trees in games and graphics. What about authentically degenerate trees?
andai 15 hours ago [-]
Now I want a simulated caterpillar. In my area, we sometimes get caterpillar apocalypse where the whole forest will be full of them, sometimes they cover entire trees with their silk.
I think the most interesting result would be somewhere halfway between 0 and 100% nibbled.
cmpb 13 hours ago [-]
Don't stop there: fungi and beetles are some other stressors that could be modeled alongside caterpillars using similar techniques. Like lepidopterans, they are very host-specific, though they have somewhat different transmission vectors, so you could see the defoliation (or other foliage impacts like leaf curling and yellowing) spread / not spread depending on factors such as proximity, moisture, wind and the parasite's lifecycle.
abrookewood 24 hours ago [-]
Pretty cool idea: "buds compete for light, the tree distributes a growth resource among them, and the successful ones produce new shoots. Those shoots change the light available for the next round. The crown shape emerges from this feedback loop."
I would never have thought to generate tree shapes by simulating real life
levicanskij 23 hours ago [-]
Procedural generation always looks magical until you realize it's just a bunch of simple rules fighting for resources.
fenykep 21 hours ago [-]
That makes it even more magical to me.
d-us-vb 18 hours ago [-]
reductionists being reductionists. I'm with you.
lloydatkinson 18 hours ago [-]
There has been a complete deluge of new accounts sometimes only hours or days old being extremely condescending, overly negative, sometimes antagonistic, and sometimes they seem like a kind of LLM prompted to cause arguments.
FuriouslyAdrift 15 hours ago [-]
HN needs to re-introduce the rule where you can't post until the account is at least a few days old.
armeehn 18 hours ago [-]
occam's razor at its finest
perfsakuya 22 hours ago [-]
The algorithm is cool and the article is pleasing to read.
oniony 20 hours ago [-]
This makes me realise that the amount of wind affects the number of viable leaves.
jihadjihad 16 hours ago [-]
[dead]
yxhuvud 21 hours ago [-]
The generated trees look absolutely amazing. Adjusting the process for different lighting situations seems straightforward too - freestanding trees look different from those in woods.
This is super cool! Been looking into procedural tree generation for a project and that paper is a great starting point.
cvanelteren 22 hours ago [-]
Oh hell yeah, a topic like this was on my bucket list for a while.
swiftcoder 1 days ago [-]
Very nice overview of procedural tree generation!
Syper 17 hours ago [-]
Could foresters use this?
pixelpoet 1 days ago [-]
Nice to see another article from Mr Arion Render, always a pleasure. And of course posted by ibobev, always worth watching his HN submissions.
eluded-xyz 22 hours ago [-]
Show me a smoothly animated demo of growth from a bud! It would look incredible
busssard 22 hours ago [-]
now i am wondering if that would correctly imitate crown shyness etc. When several trees grow close to each other
swiftcoder 21 hours ago [-]
It can, but doing that for a whole forest would require a lot of voxels!
yxhuvud 21 hours ago [-]
Yes, especially as not all trees are the same age, and the older trees were grown defined by even older trees that are now gone.
busssard 19 hours ago [-]
yeah, and them having different rules for growth given different species
swiftcoder 18 hours ago [-]
All their growth models do involve light, however. So it probably does make sense to have a common light representation - ideally some sort of sparse cone storage though, not a voxel grid the size of a forest.
camidagreat1 20 hours ago [-]
This is beautiful! Thank you for sharing!
Rendered at 08:39:20 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I think my overall thought is: we see plenty of nice looking trees in games and graphics. What about authentically degenerate trees?
I think the most interesting result would be somewhere halfway between 0 and 100% nibbled.
I would never have thought to generate tree shapes by simulating real life