Dendritic stylization

Dendritic or branching structures are commonly seen in natural phenomena such as lightning, cracks, and vegetal growth. They are also often used for artistic or decorative purposes. We present a new procedural method for modeling dendritic structures based on a path planning approach. Our method includes the use of a partial non-scalar distance metric that gives us powerful and responsive control over the evolving dendritic structure. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by creating dendritic stylizations of input images. We also show how our approach can be used to model more complex dendritic structures, such as trees; our algorithm allows us to create pareidolia effects, where an image is embedded within the branches of the tree.