We present a prototype of a forest in which a video game player can move and interact physically with the trees. The trees are procedurally built on-the-fly at each redraw. Two animation approaches are combined: a procedural method which handles most of the trees efficiently, and a physically-based method which allows user interaction with the trees. The physically-based method is dynamically applied only where needed. Physical data is computed only where the physical method is applied, and deleted afterwards. Smooth transitions between animation methods are performed. Levels of detail are used for rendering and for procedural animation. Our method allows the display and the animation, including user action, of a 256-tree forest at interactive rates.

@inproceedings{DCF01,
author = {Thomas {Di Giacomo} and St\'ephane Capo and Fran\c{c}ois Faure},
title = {An Interactive Forest},
booktitle = {Eurographics Workshop on Computer Animation and Simulation, EGCAS 2001, September, 2001},
series = {Computer Science},
editor = {Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann and Daniel Thalmann},
address = {Manchester, Royaume-Uni},
publisher = {Springer},
pages = {65--74},
keywords = {trees, animation, physically-based animation, multi-resolution animation},
month = sep,
year = 2001
}