Figure: Single image tree modeling. (a) Single input image of a tree downloaded from www.flickr.com. (b) Strokes drawn by the user, only two strokes for this example. (c) The automatic synthesis of the tree branches. (d) The complete tree model rendered at the same viewpoint as the input image.
In this paper, we introduce a simple sketching method to generate a realistic 3D tree model from a single image. The user draws at least two strokes in the tree image: the first crown stroke around the tree crown to mark up the leaf region, the second branch stroke from the tree root to mark up the main trunk, and possibly few other branch strokes for refinement. The method automatically generates a 3D tree model including branches and leaves. Branches are synthesized by a growth engine from a small library of elementary subtrees that are pre-defined or built on the fly from the recovered visible branches. The visible branches are automatically traced from the drawn branch strokes according to image statistics on the strokes. Leaves are generated from the region bounded by the first crown stroke to complete the tree. We demonstrate our method on a variety of examples.
The following video by Sesame Street: House of Bricks (House of Cards Parody) seems to use our models as the trees in the background.
We thank Marcus Lundberg, Sean Pecor and Jason Ramsay, for their permission to use their pictures in this paper. Ping Tan is supported by Singapore FRC Grant R-263-000-477-112. This work is also supported by Hong Kong RGC Grants 618908, 619107, 619006 and RGC/NSFC N-HKUST602/05.