An open-source application for generating and rendering realistic forest scenes using L-systems and OpenGL. Created for my MEng Computer Science Individual Project (Part III Dissertation) at the University of Southampton.

Simulation of forest environments has applications from entertainment and art creation to commercial and scientific modelling. Due to the unique features and lighting in forests, a forest-specific simulator is desirable, however many current forest simulators are proprietary or highly tailored to a particular application. To solve this problem, my Part III dissertation involved the design and implementation of a 3D virtual forest simulator which is currently being used in academic research for the training of AI-based robot-swarm steering algorithms.

The system has over 500 configurable parameters, and as a result can generate an infinite number of tree species, terrains and overall forest scenes. The tree models are generated with L-systems are distributed throughout the scene using an ecosystem simulation. The resulting scene is then rendered with a deferred rendering pipeline, using a Blinn-Phong shading model adapted for leaf transparency; along with high-dynamic-range tone mapping, shadow mapping and post-processing shaders for ambient occlusion and volumetric light scattering.

This work has been submitted to the Computer Graphics Forum (CGF) and a pre-print version of the journal article is currently available on arXiv. A demonstration video can be found on YouTube.