A Modelling Method and User Interface for Creating Plants

We present a modelling method and graphical user interface for the creation of natural branching structures such as plants. Structural and geometric information is encapsulated in objects that are combined to form a description of the model. The model is represented graphically as a structure graph and can be edited interactively. Global and partial constraint techniques are integrated on the basis of tropisms, free-form deformations and pruning operations to allow the modelling of specific shapes. We show examples to illustrate the design process and evaluate the user interface.