Month: January 2013

Le:Notre Online Seminar Landscape Architecture + Climate Change

| Olaf Schroth

Today, the University of Nuertingen hosts another session in its series of online lectures on landscape architecture and climate change. I invite you to join an interesting session scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, 8th of January, from 18 – 19 30 pm CET. You can join the seminar simply by clicking on this link and adding a guest name:

https://webconf.vc.dfn.de/onlineseminar/

Invited are three experts who have also published two books on the theme during the last year. The programme will be as follows:
 

  • Don Quixote, Sancho Panza and the Landscape Architect: Exploring Alternative Energy Landscapes, Dr. Sven Stremke|WUR Wageningen, NL
  • The social acceptability of energy landscapes, Dr Olaf Schroth
  • Engaging Communities on Climate Change with Visual Learning Tools, Stephen Sheppard, UBC Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions

We will end the session with an interactive discussion.

In the coming weeks there will be two further sessions – the last of this series –  that might be of interest for you. They are accessible the same way as this one, always from 18 – 19 30 CET:

  • Tuesday, 15th of January: Adapting open space planning to climate change Lecture by Dr. Sanda Lenzholzer|WUR Wageningen, NL
  • Tuesday, 22nd of January: Adapting Urban Planting design to climate change Lecture by Dr. MaryCarol Hunter|University of Michigan, USA

Please note that the presentations are further provided online under the following URL where you can watch them even if you miss the live discussion:

http://fluswikien.hfwu.de/index.php/Course_Schedule_Seminar_Climate_Change_2012

 

 

Interactive Modeling of Self-Adapting Botanical Trees

| Olaf Schroth

Already a few weeks ago, a colleague drew my attention to a couple of new papers on interactive self-adapting botanical tree models, published by the computer visualization group in Konstanz, who had also presented at Siggraph 2011 (see my previous post about Siggraph). This new development in procedural modeling techniques makes tree models possible that will interact with their environment! For example, if you insert a building, the surrounding trees will change their shape and branches will give way to the new object in a most realistic way.

How are these astonishing results achieved? Input is a skeleton-based tree geometry. In contrast to traditional tree growing models, the new technique approximates biologically motivated transformations. Main factor is the light distribution and the amount of resources a tree receives. On that basis, the growth rate for the entire tree and individual branches as well as branch ages are calculated. A complex illumination model makes sure that light conditions are updated for different stages of tree growth. Additional factors are phototropism and gravitropism and I was surprised how realistic the outcomes look.

Because the approach does not require the tree model to be reconstructed from the beginning, it performs much better than previous approaches and is even suitable for real-time applications. That means, you could insert an object such as a building but also other trees and experiment in real-time how the surrounding trees might change their growth in response to each other and inanimate objects.

For more information and the original research paper, please see

SIGGRAPH 2012:
http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/publikationen/2012/plastic_trees/website/

SIGGRAPH Asia 2012:
http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/publikationen/2012/tree_growth/website/

Plastic Trees: Interactive Modeling of Self-Adapting Botanical Trees from Soeren Pirk on Vimeo.