Crookedness

[Erik Clemens]

As far as I can see, a lot of energy is put particularly in the leaves, while ivy is actually branches curling around and against anything it grows on. Therefore it would be more realistic if there would be some more parameters with which you could shape the branches (curliness, crookedness, etc.).

[iToo]

You can achieve it with the following 'Grow' parameters:

- Length (min/max): use lower values, to get more but smaller branches.
- 'Segments': increase it to add more segments (refine) to the branch's sections.
- 'Branch Noise': use a high value (nearest 100%) to get the crookedness effect.

Please compare attached samples, using Branch Noise = 0/0 and 100/100 respectively.

[Erik Clemens]

Hi Carlos,

First congrats on this new addition. I have always been yealous bout Baga Ivy Generator for Blender and this is the perfect "alternative" for 3dsMax:)

What I mean is more 3D behaviour. All the tools I know of (Baga and Ivy by EVVisual) can detail the branches mostly in the 2D plane (or the polygons of the object you are painting on). But when I want some close-up of branches curling around each other (see attached pic) I have to resort to GrowFX. It doesn't have to be physically correct, just the appearance of branches around branches. Maybe the possibilty to define 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 branches around the baseline with subbranches curling around a few times before they span out.

Other things I am missing are a falloff region along the trunk/branch/subbranches at which leaves start to grow (2nd pic). Also the possibility to set an attractor towards where branches tend to grow (light/sun, custom attractor). Branch and leaf tendancy should not necessarily be the same, even if phys. correct. A long time ago I have seen a plugin (think it was Houdini), where you could "comb" the direction of branches after which the ivy regenerated quite physically correct.

[SeanRedmond]

Some cool ideas here. I tried messing around with the first idea and got some pretty decent results by using 3 different Ivy generators - the first with just branches and a tree as the surface, the second generator with the tree + the first generator as a surface, and the third generator with the tree and the first + second ivys as surfaces.

[Erik Clemens]

...got some pretty decent results...

Pretty decent to say the least So this proves it should be not that hard to offer such an option in the plugin.

[Erik Clemens]

Another request that came to my mind after seeing the second picture I posted: isn't it possible to generate a UV- or vertex-map/channel so you can colorize/map leaves by (generation)age, size, location (on different branches), etc ?

[iToo]

Another request that came to my mind after seeing the second picture I posted: isn't it possible to generate a UV- or vertex-map/channel so you can colorize/map leaves by (generation)age, size, location (on different branches), etc ?

Added to FP 9.0.2: you can colorize leaves using Forest Color->'Tint from Surface map'. UVW coordinates are taken from the surface object.
By now it uses map channel 1 only. We should add some extra parameter to handle this.

[Erik Clemens]

...
Added to FP 9.0.2: you can colorize leaves using Forest Color->'Tint from Surface map'. UVW coordinates are taken from the surface object.
By now it uses map channel 1 only. We should add some extra parameter to handle this.

Sounds great At least this puts you in control where you want to change colors. But an automatic uv-map generation for said features would still be nice.
Utmost efforts for better images