In this paper, we give a general outline for rendering physically-based thermal infrared images of simple vegetation scenes. Our approach incorporates the biophysical processes that affect the temperature distribution of the vegetation elements within a scene. The thermal model is driven by readily available, standard meteorological measurements including local wind speed, relative humidity, air temperature, and short-wave illumination.
Computer graphics plays a key role in two respects.
First, in computing the distribution of shaded and sunlit facets within the scene and, second, in the final image rendering once the temperatures of all the elements in the scene have been computed. Statistical methods are used to construct a representation of the scene in agreement with the measured characteristics. Our results are quite good. The rendered images exhibited realistic behavior in the directional properties as a function of view and sun angle. Inc. All rights reserved.