2011-09-14
Forator was part of my Bachelor Work at HEIG-VD.
The Institute Cap3D needed a tool to generate 3D virtual forests in Flt file format. The tool is used to set a forest, generate it, visualize it and finally export it.
With the user interface you can select the types of trees, set their height as desired or import a file containing real life datas. It can define a density for the forest and the level of precision needed to represent it. The parameters of LODs (number of LODs, minimum sight distance, maximum sight distance , number of levels) can also be defined to manage the performance of the application at the best.
Forator 1.1 allows the user to manage several areas in the same work session. This offers a global visualization for a region. The management of multiple zones can also be performed by batch processing. It offers significant time savings to the user.
The generation algorithm has been studied to optimize the execution time when generating forests of very large sizes. The user can configure how to generate a forest according to his needs and the size of the problem (accuracy vs. efficiency).
For a forest zone, the application will determine the best generation parameters according to tree size and the number of trees to be generated.
Visualization and interaction with the 3D scene were build with OpenSceneGraph, an Opensource API in C + +. The user interface was developed in Qt.