Abstract:

Computer modeling and visualization of forest landscape recently becomes a hot topic,whose study can benefit such fields as ecology,forest management,physical geography and botany,etc. There are 3 major techniques to construct a visual model of vegetation: traditional polygon-based modeling,photo-realistic image-based modeling,and procedure-based modeling. Polygon-based model is widely used for plants and forest scenes rendering; image and procedure-based models provide more effective solutions for complex scenes simulation and deal well with massive data. The state-of-the-art development in this field is reviewed from the perspectives of single tree modeling,forest scenery rendering,forest growth model classification and characteristics,and typical virtual forest modeling systems. The trend and key issues to be solved in forest landscape ecosystem modeling and visualization are also discussed.

Key words: forest landscape, virtual reality, geometric model, rendering, review