# Three Dimensional Reconstruction of Botanical Trees with Simulatable Geometry

## TL;DR

This paper presents a method for creating detailed 3D models of botanical trees from drone images, enabling accurate physical simulations of their response to environmental forces.

## Contribution

The authors develop a pipeline that transforms 2D drone images into comprehensive 3D tree models with high geometric and topological accuracy, surpassing previous methods.

## Key findings

- Achieved state-of-the-art geometric and topological accuracy.
- Created detailed point clouds and textured meshes from drone images.
- Made all data and models publicly available for future research.

## Abstract

We tackle the challenging problem of creating full and accurate three dimensional reconstructions of botanical trees with the topological and geometric accuracy required for subsequent physical simulation, e.g. in response to wind forces. Although certain aspects of our approach would benefit from various improvements, our results exceed the state of the art especially in geometric and topological complexity and accuracy. Starting with two dimensional RGB image data acquired from cameras attached to drones, we create point clouds, textured triangle meshes, and a simulatable and skinned cylindrical articulated rigid body model. We discuss the pros and cons of each step of our pipeline, and in order to stimulate future research we make the raw and processed data from every step of the pipeline as well as the final geometric reconstructions publicly available.