rewt is a 3d plant-root animator. Using parameterized plant-root modeling, rewt renders the development of a root system over time, giving the user a glimpse at what they would never see because people cannot see under ground; it't too dark. The point of rewt to generate realistic-looking roots and root growth. However, a secondary concern is to explore modeling ecological and biological processes. rewt is written in GLUT and OpenGL. It builds on MACOSX and LINUX.
"The two major functions of roots are 1) absorption of water and inorganic nutrients and 2) anchoring of the plant body to the ground." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root).
After reading many abstracts and a couple of papers (see bottom of
this page) on the root systems of trees and plants, I started to think of
plants as pumps. They generally pump water and inorganic nutrients up while
they pump carbon (collected from CO2) down. Roots systems are the result of
carbohydrate (carbon) investment over time. Trees are not conscious; Their
root morphologies are the result of environment and genetic programing.
However, if trees were conscious, one could imagine them asking "where should I
go with my roots?" Root systems are generally the result of balancing soil
exploration, transport efficiency (you got to pump stuff back up), resource
cost, and mechanical advantage (anchoring the plant).
In each step of rewt's root model, space exploration, transport
efficiency, and resource cost are considered; New roots are created out of the
ends of current roots while current roots are widened or discarded. Roots are
grown in the context of a nutritious environment, a volume filled with
invisible objects representing nutritients. Space exploration strategies are
generally a function of the genetics of the plant.
rewt would be more aptly named "space debris" right now. I am working toward rendering roots with cylinder+sphere primitives with a simple lighting model, but my lack of familiarity with 3d math and OpenGL make for slow going. Right now, I believe I have a problem rotating gluCylinders. gluCylinders jump around like crazy--It looks so cool, but it is not what I mean to do. After I fix that and get the roots rendered in terms of roughly shaded cylinder+sphere opjects, I will work on the dynamics system that I talk about above.
browse the source here:
https://svn.mat.ucsb.edu/svn/yerkes/rewt/
get a copy of the rewt source code with:
svn co svn+ssh://svn.mat.ucsb.edu/svn/yerkes/rewt
1987 - An Architectural Approach To The Comparative Ecology Of Plant Root Systems - A. H. Fitter
1991 - Architectural Analysis Of Plant Root Systems - A. H. Fitter and T. R. Stickland
1999 - Characterization Of Structural Tree Root Architecture Using 3D digitizing And AMAPmod Software -
2006 - Depth-Related Fine Root Dynamics Of Fagus Sylvatica During Exceptional Drought - Raphael Mainiero and Marian Kazda
1987 - Developmental Processes In Tree Root Systems - M. P. Coutts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radicle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokinin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution
http://www.cs.unh.edu/~charpov/Programming/L-systems/
http://www.iit.edu/~krawczyk/branch.html
http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/
http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/WebApps/LSystems/LSys.html
http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/handbook.95.html