Real-Time Modeling and Animation of Climbing Plants | Two Minute Papers #146

Dear fellow scholars, this is two Minute Papers with this paper is about interactively modeling and editing climbing plants. This is one of my favorite kind of works. Mundane sounding topic, immaculate execution. There are so many cool things about this paper I don't even know where to start. But first let's talk about the modeling part. We can for instance plant a seed and we can not only have a look at how it grows as time goes by, but we can also influence the grow variability and shoot growth rates. Branches can be added and removed at will at any point in time. We can also add attractors regions that are said to be more likely for the plant to grow towards. With these techniques we can easily create any sort of artistic effect, be it highly artificial looking vines and branches or some long forgotten object overgrown with climbing plants. However, a model is just 3D geometry. What truly makes these models come alive is animation, which is also executed with flying colors. The animations created with this technique are both biologically and physically plausible. So what do these terms mean exactly? Biologically plausible means that the plants grow according to the laws of nature, and physically plausible means that if we start tugging at it, branches start moving, bending and breaking according to the laws of physics. Due to its responsive and interactive nature, the applications of this technique are typically in the domain of architectural visualization, digital storytelling, or any sort of real time application. And of course, the usual suspects. Animated movies and game developers can use this to create more immersive digital environments with ease. And don't forget about me Caroj, who would happily play with this basically all day long. If you are one of our many fellow scholars who are completely addicted to two minute papers and make sure to check out our Patreon page where you can grab cool perks like watching these episodes in early access or deciding the order of upcoming episodes and more. Also, your support is extremely helpful, so much so that even the price of a cup of coffee per month helps us to create better videos for you. We write some reports from time to time to assess the improvements we were able to make with your support. The link is in the video description or you can just click the letter P on the ending screen. In a moment, click on thanks for watching and for your generous support and I'll see you next time.