Research Of The Sunflower Dynamic Growth Model Construct Method

Plants were the most important and general life forms in the nature, and were very close to our daily lives. Virtual Plant was an interesting subject that simulates the growth process of the plants in 3-dimension space in computer, and reflects the morphological architecture rules of the plants. It was one of the most time-consuming, complex and pivotal technologies, belonging to the Virtual Reality. Virtual Plant had become one of the focuses in the Computer Science area, and opened up a vast range of application area, including agriculture, forest, education, entertainment, business and so on.The common plant construct methods were not suitable for all kinds of plants. And it was difficult to balance the efficiency and the quality. Additionaylly, there had been a lot of papers talked over the model of trees, wheat, soybean, corn, cotton, rice, etc. But few or nothing was about sunflower. So the paper aimed at the sunflower, but not the general plant. According to the sunflower's topological structures and the data got by the researchers on the botany, this article visualized the growth of the whole plant, except the root. The main research and achievements were as follows:(1) Analyzed the special character of the sunflower organs, summarized various modeling methods, and selected the suitable method to construct the geometry model of the organs. A method which helps to gain a delicate sketch of the leaf from a rough one is proposed.(2) Simulated the dynamic growth process, including the movement process of the stem following the sun, of the organs by suitable growth function and reasonable assumption. The traditional L-System was improved for greater efficiency and less memory space, and successfully used in the visualization of the flower and skeleton of the leaf.(3) Set up the growth model of the sunflower based on the Dual-Scale Automation Model proposed by Dr. Xing-Zhao of CUST.(4) Designed the Sunflower Growing Simulation and Visualization System , which was aimed at the biological laboratory courses of the middle and primary schools. So the validity of the solution was fully verified. At the same time, the system could be widely used to prove the traditional teaching method.