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Introduction

SmartForest is a graphics application that renders scenes of trees on the computer screen. It reads ground elevation/slope information along with tree information from input files to render a pseudo-realistic image of the area that the user wants to see. If the user's input files are generated from programs that describe real-life places, then the image that SmartForest renders should look similar to the real-life location. SmartForest distributes trees randomly throughout the scene so the image that is rendered will not look precisely like the real-world location.

SmartForest has two implementations: one in C and one in Java. This document describes the C implementation. From this point forward, when we talk about the SmartForest implementation, we really mean the C implementation of SmartForest.

SmartForest is implemented under the X Windows system. X Windows is primarily used on computers that run the Unix operating system. It uses the Motif extension to X Windows to implement the application's windows and OpenGL to handle the drawings inside those windows. It currently compiles on AIX version 4.3. SmartForest will also compile on Microsoft Windows with the Exceed XDK library. The source code is identical when compiling to either AIX 4.3 or Microsoft Windows.