A polar-plane-based method for natural illumination of plants and trees

We introduce an illumination method for outdoor scenes containing plants and trees. Our method supports multiresolution plant and tree models based on random L-systems. The method includes modeling and rendering of the sky at different times for different locations on the earth. We propose an efficient algorithm to illuminate the leaves of a tree using form factors pre-computed with a polar-plane-based method. We also present two solutions to the visibility problem, a heuristic solution and a solution integrated with the polar-plane method.