I just finished modelling this tree
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This is a reference photo:
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I tried to make similar shape of a crown and now i'm trying to animate this tree Any ideas how to make good animation of leaves and top branches? Snx!

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So, i made a group by $WIDTH attribute to select outer branches, now i need to add... a turbulence field... How?

Looks nice, but I'd like to suggest 2 things:

• Make your twigs more wiggly. You could add more segments to a twig by not moving forward the complete step ( ~(b)F ), but instead rotate into a certain direction, forward half the way, then rotate back and forward the remaining half way ( ~(0.5*b)&H~(0.5*b)^H )
• Your tree always branches off 3 twigs. Use probabilities to randomly switch between rules, that branch off 1, 2 or 3 twigs.

Snx for help, I'll add probability later and i'll try to rotate twigs

And many thanks to David Gary for his great dvd's about L-systems!

Nice job! Post more updates and a few details please!

nice one

Any ideas how to simulate wind? And how to make "sky sensitive" leaves?

Great File. I meant to respond earlier, but got distracted going through your file, very helpful. In regards to simulating wind, there is an example help file using Wire Dynamics to simulate an l-system in the wind, though this may be over kill. Depending on what you would like the wind to look like I would be tempted to use expressions to animate the points. I'm not sure what you mean by "sky sensitive" leaves, do you mean you want them all to be facing up? If so in the past I have used a VOP SOP to bias normals to point upright, without rotating too far from there initial direction. Can't wait to see the next update.

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So, i've discovered how to rotate normals in +Y direction (if they are negative) in VOP's but i still don't know how to make "sky sensitive" leaves Maybe because i don't know what i want to get? For example, leaf's normals always look at the sky, neither the horizon nor ground.

At last i finished first step of my journey! Now my leaves are "sky sensitive"!!! Pls, check Branch_Controls node to adjust parameters
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Next step is to make the whole tree with my branches.
Ultimate update! - Click to view attachment

you can try generating some noise patterns in CHOPs and then override the parameters that effects the angles of the branches.
CHOPs works very nice with L-systems in getting the wind effect. you just need to find the right parameters to override.
nice models
cheers,
selcuk

branch in dynamics

movie, 400 kb

Yes, looks good in dynamic. you can add a residual movement branch a little more for more realistic

so, this is last update - modeling in houdini and rendering in vray.

Amazing!!

Any plans to make mantra renders ??

Really nice work

This nice! I like the lightning and rendering!

Great images Mentor!

Nice progress.

Wow nice work mentor.

nice work

are u using that python connection(can't find the link right now) to render to Vray?

jason

ultra nice, very lifelike

snx for replies! i'm exporting geometry to OBJ and then to 3dmax. I know people who makes vray connector, but i don't using this connector
this is my another experimental plants:

great stuff.

Great!...and all of them happened to grow at the center of the bullseye. How lucky

Seriously, even if it´s v-ray, could you tell us a little about the leaves shader? The renders of the "forest" seen from above (3rd render at this very page) have a nice translucency look that really sells the image.

Netvudu
This is simple double-sided vray material First i made simple vray material with green diffuse color and then put them to 2sided material (translucency color white - value = 240)

ahh those are nice looking trees, i think the wood(bark) could do with some work, but the maybe those won't be visible i the final images, if that's what u are working to?

i'm really loving V-ray, busy beta testing it for another CG app at the moment, it's a pretty quick and solid renderer!

jason

Wow Mentor that's some amazing work. Keep it up I'd like to see a whole forest with different tree species.

Good Job

Hey excellent stuff!

Awesome looking foliage, i am doing my personal research at uni on realistic modeling of trees/plants using L-systems and so far these are looking pretty damm good. I would also say however that yes depending on how much the viewer will see the bark, they could do with some displacement or bump mapping as they are looking quite smooth.

Well done though, i got some good points to make in my research.

Thanks, all the best

Julia

snx! i used bump map on the trunk. maybe displacement or normal map will be better in this case.