Simeo is a multipurpose 3D scene editor, designed to (i) create interactively 3D vegetal scenes, (ii) export to other simulation tools and (iii) host growth models for 3D vegetal scenes.

Simeo works on several plants: it is the scene level part of AMAPstudio: a software studio for plants architecture modelling (Griffon and Coligny, 2014), developed at the AMAP laboratory since 2008. The main other AMAPstudio component is Xplo, which proposes editors and growth simulators at the single plant level.

The Simeo software proposes spatialised scene level features, including plants layout and editing features as well as dynamics simulators hosting. Both Simeo and Xplo try to keep a similar user interface policy to make their use as easy and intuitive as possible. The plants of the scene may result from observations or from a growth model e.g. in Xplo or AmapSim (Barczi et al., 2008), their topology and geometry are coded in a multi-scale representation (Godin and Caraglio, 1998).

Simeo brings interactive editors to work on the plant architecture with classical import/export capabilities and specific features. It proposes a set of plugins to layout plants according to several patterns. The terrain where the plants are added can either be flat, with a single slope or rely on any height map. It is possible to select plants and move them easily with the mouse, or set their coordinates more accurately through an editor, and similarly enter angles to rotate them. The customised scene can be exported to biophysical simulators with dedicated connection plugins, e.g. an Archimed-MIR (Dauzat et al., 2008) radiative balance simulator. The results can be added in new attributes for the impacted plant components and can then be explored inside AMAPstudio or exported to other software for further analysis.

Simeo may embed dynamics models at the scene level (i.e. several plants), thus enabling to consider the possible competition for resources between neighbouring plants. The candidate dynamics models may indeed be very different, some of them including a more or less detailed description of the environment.

Simeo was designed around a Capsis kernel to host and manage simulation models based on the Capsis technical framework (Dufour-Kowalski et al., 2012). The Capsis kernel brings its features to manage the simulations in memory: session, projects, simulation steps, scenarios, with features to save a simulation on disc and reload it. Each software can be run either with a bilingual graphical user interface (GUI pilot) or without it for long or repetitive simulations (Script pilot).

References

Griffon S., de Coligny F., 2014. AMAPstudio: an Editing and Simulation Software Suite for Plants Architecture Modelling. Ecological Modelling (2014) 290:3-10

J.-F. Barczi, H. Rey, Y. Caraglio, P. de Reffye, D. Barthélémy, Q. Dong, T. Fourcaud, 2008. AMAPsim: an integrative whole-plant architecture simulator based on botanical knowledge. Annals of Botany, 101, pp. 1125–1138

C. Godin, Y. Caraglio, 1998. A multiscale model of plant topological structures. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 191, pp. 1–46

J. Dauzat, P. Clouvel, D. Luquet, P. Martin, 2008. Using virtual plants to analyse the light-foraging efficiency of a low-density cotton crop. Annals of Botany, 101, pp. 1153–1166

Dufour-Kowalski S., Courbaud B., Dreyfus P., Meredieu C., de Coligny F., 2012. Capsis: an open software framework and community for forest growth modelling. Annals of Forest Science (2012) 69:221–233