Simulating Wood Using a Voxel Approach

Abstract

In this paper we present a technique for generating three-dimensional wood textures using a regular texture array. Currently three-dimensional wood textures are generated using procedural textures. Procedural textures are flexible and require little memory, however the modeling of local artifacts such as knots is difficult using the procedural approach. By representing the wood as a texture array and growing the wood in this array we can easily simulate local phenomena such as knots. Our growth model is an approximation to the biological model and assumes that there are several similar wood cells per array element. This means that we can model artifacts that are defined by groups of similar cells. In particular our model is well suited for the modeling of soft-woods.