Rendering plants with dual-scale automaton model based on GPU

In order to accelerate plants rendering of dual-scale automaton model, a method based on GPU was proposed for model realization. In this method, the 3D structure of plant was constructed by combining with topological structure and normalized plant organs. Firstly, topological structure was constructed in vertex shader, then geometrical structure was built in geometry shader, and finally geometrical structure was transfered to frame buffer for displaying. The GPU-based method was tested by rendering a poplar tree. In the experiment, as the point number multiplied, the speed-up ratio of GPU rendering relative to CPU rendering could increase several-fold and even ten times. The results not only adequately showed the effectiveness of this GPU-based rendering method, but also fully represented its remarkable improvement in computation. Moreover, rendering plants with dual-scale automaton model based on GPU can be applied to natural scenery rendering, virtual agriculture, computer-aided design etc, which involves enormous data.