vtlib/vtdata Vegetation

VTP Vegetation

The VTP software provides a framework for working with vegetation.

An appearance is an representation of how a plant looks, which can be an image or a model.
A species consists of a scientific name, any number of common names, and any number of appearances.
A species list is a list of species.
A plant instance is a specific specimen of a plant, in the real world.
A plant density is a representation of how densely a plant is distributed, consisting of a reference to a species and a density, in instances per square meter.
A biotype is like a ecological type classification. It consists of any number of plant densities, which together describe how many species are found in a certain area, and the density of each. For example, "Hawaiian Mid-Elevation Rainforest" would be a biotype.
A bioregion is a set of all the biotypes found in a given region. For example, the California bioregion contains biotypes for coastal wetlands, temperate rainforest, dry grasslands, alpine forest, etc.

Each of these concepts is implemented in the VTP libraries with a C++ class, developers please see Vegetation Classes.

A species list can be saved and loaded from a XML file with this simple format.
A bioregion, including each biotype description, can be saved and loaded from a text file, which looks like this. It is a simple list of biotypes, each composed of a number of species (by common name) and a density (in plants per square meter).
The customary place for these files is in the directory "Data/PlantData", which is where they are by default in the VTP distribution.
It is hopefully straightforward to see how to add your own vegetation description to these files.
A set of plant instances can be saved and loaded from a format called VF, "vegetation file".

See the VTBuilder documentation for how to process raw distribution data (e.g. LULC, SHP) into a VF file. The VF format is documented if you want to create it yourself without using VTBuilder.
Next, copy the file (.vf file extension) into the directory "Data/PlantData"
Select it in the Enviro Terrain Parameters dialog

Create or extend the species.xml file. It is in a very simple, self-explanatory format.
The plant appearances should be placed in the directory "Data/PlantModels"