Animating plant growth in L-system by parametric functional symbols

This article proposes an animating system for plant growth in the Lindenmayer (L) system in which alphabets are parameterized to the length, size, and position of each component of the plant. The growth rate is approximated by sigmoidal curves. To achieve a realistic leaf shape, a set of shape functions is used to transform a skeleton of primary branches into the final shape. Genetic algorithm (GA) is used to fit the shape’s parameters. Modeling of the soybean is shown. The developments of plant growth are smooth and natural as well as realistic. This prototype can be used to generate a realistic model of any plant based on the L-system. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.