Virtual climbing plants competing for space

An old algorithm for visual simulation of climbing plants is extended here. Plants are modeled as systems of oriented particles that are able to sense their environment. Particles move to the best locations using directed random walk. We use the phenomenon of traumatic reiteration for critical cases. If there is no location for further growth possible the particle dies, but before that it sends a signal that is propagated down in the plant structure. This signal activates the closest possible sleeping particle that takes its job. We use an associated voxel space for collisions and space occupancy detection as well as for evaluating the illumination of the plant organs. The algorithm is fast, easy to implement, and runs interactively even for quite large scenes on a medium-class computer. We believe that this approach can be used as an interactive technique in architecture, computer games, computer animation, etc.