Plugins

Plug-ins build on the Helios core engine and operate on the geometry and data held in the Context. Links to the documentation for each plug-in currently wrapped in PyHelios are given below. Each plug-in documentation page lists its dependencies, the PyHelios import, the main class, and usage examples.

Available Plug-ins

• Boundary-Layer Conductance: boundary-layer conductance model calculations based on several possible models.
• Energy Balance Model: surface energy balance solution.
• Leaf Optics: implementation of the PROSPECT leaf optical model of leaf reflectance and transmittance spectra.
• Terrestrial LiDAR: processing terrestrial LiDAR point-cloud data into leaf area, leaf angle distributions, and reconstructed plant geometry.
• Photosynthesis Model: photosynthetic assimilation model.
• Plant Architecture: flexible procedural plant generation with dynamic growth and phenology.
• Radiation Model: GPU-accelerated ray-tracing radiation transport model (all platforms via Vulkan; NVIDIA systems via OptiX).
• Solar Position: model for the position of the sun in the sky, as well as solar radiation flux and longwave flux from the sky.
• Stomatal Conductance Model: model for the conductance of water vapor through stomatal pores.
• Visualizer: OpenGL-based visualization of model geometry and data.
• Weber-Penn Tree: procedural tree architecture generation.

Additional Helios plug-ins (e.g. Aerial LiDAR, Canopy Generator, Parameter Optimization, Plant Hydraulics, Project Builder) are available in the native C++ library but do not yet have dedicated PyHelios documentation pages. See the native Helios documentation for those.

For details on how PyHelios builds, selects, and detects plug-ins at runtime, see Building and Selecting Plug-ins.