Procedural Generation and Rendering of Trees and Landscapes in the Style of Eyvind Earle

Abstract

In this thesis I develop methods of generating digital 3D landscapes in the style of the artist, Eyvind Earle, who is perhaps most well-known for his art direction and background paintings on Sleeping Beauty. I develop a variety of trees and other terrain elements, each tailored to match the graphic shapes and rendered accordingly to match the style of reference artwork. Creation of both terrain and trees can be highly generative in nature – complex in a way that lends to being defined by a logical systematic approach. I provide procedural methods for matching the shapes of the objects, relying on noise, L-systems, and other constraints. In general, the process is divided into base geometry generation and shading details. Shading methods include simple custom shaders and geometry-based stippling and linework. The various systems are implemented in Side Effects Software’s Houdini as its procedural capabilities allows the creation of many scenes with the same tools.