The Simulation of 3D Plant Leaves Wilting

To simulate the deformation process of virtual plant leaves wilting under the condition of lack of water, high temperature etc., a new method is presented in this paper.By using an improved single layered mass-spring system that combines the physiological and physical characteristics of plant leaf, this method reproduces the wilting processes of plant leaves with different vein structures.This method takes several steps.First, outlines and veins of virtual plant leaf are extracted from leaf photos to generate a mesh model.Second, a mass-spring model is constructed from the mesh model.The mass-spring model takes the key observation into consideration that the wilting shapes of plant leaves are caused by different shrinkages between the mesophyll cells and vein cells during water shortages.Mass points in the mass-spring model are divided into three categories with different stress constraints so as to move mass points with different patterns.Finally, the contraction forces of springs on the vein are set differently to that of other springs in order to use the vein to guide the deformation process.Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method realistically simulates the wilting deformation processes of plant leaves with different vein structure, and achieves real-time rendering speed.