l system guide

[hatrick]

Hi,

Is it possible to guide an lsystem branch along a manual orientated spline ?

THX

[Netvudu]

Yup. CmiVFX´s L-system tut explains this quite thoroughly, but in case you can´t purchase it, the basic way to do this is:

1) create your l-system without any width, just the bare wire

2) Put the L-system through a wire capture and then a wire deform which forces

the L-system to the shape of your spline

3) Give width to the l-system with the polywire SOP using the $WIDTH attribute as your wire radius so that the branches are thinner than the main body without needing any manual input from your side.

From my experiments a smooth before the polywire and a subdivide after the polywire tend to give more pleasant results.

Also play with the Lsystem seed because some random shapes behave more predictably than others. This is cool because it´s very easy to get variation but also has the drawback that some of those random shapes make your wire capture or deform work better or worse.

´tis fun

[hatrick]

!!thx!!