3D modeling of vegetation

This research started with need for an accurate 3D modeling of vegetation for solar irradiation. A preliminary study showed that the effect of vegetation on façade solar irradiation is significant.

Subsequent studies refined the 3D modeling with alpha shapes reconstruction, also implemented using the CGAL Library. Here’s the Windows executable that can be used with a *.xyz input file in the command line to produce a 3D mesh of trees:

alphashape.exe alpha infile.xyz 

where alpha is the alpha parameter (e.g. 0.75) and infile.xyz is the input file.

This Github repository contains some utilities (MATLAB and C++) for the 3D reconstruction of vegetation from point clouds.