Rendering foliage with curved leaves.

Abstract

Most 3D models of trees represent their leaf by a single polygon, which makes specular highlights from leaves flat and unrealistic. Although leaf models with curved geometry can reduce the problem, this increases the number of meshes and decreases display speed. In this study, we approximated curved leaves by simple bump maps described by linear functions. We also proposed an analytic anti-aliasing method for the proposed leaf bump map. Synthesized images by the proposed method demonstrated realistic specular reflection of leaves both in near and far scenes.