Tree and Foliage Tools

[Vexosaur 72]

Hey, thought I'd share this here. 

Preview of tree and foliage creation and layout tools now available on Gumroad. I've released them as "pay what you want" as my contribution to the community. I plan to keep supporting and improving these tools in future as well as releasing other tools. Let me know if you have any feedback/suggestions and I look forward to seeing what people create with them. Enjoy!

https://gumroad.com/l/zWFNX

 

 

[Guest tar]

Looks cool - do you have a sample of a final tree available to check out? 

[Vexosaur 72]

If you want to just check it out you can download it for free off Gumroad. It includes this example scene. 

[stickman 34]

Wow. Will purchase everything you release!
Eyeing that ice maker!

[Vexosaur 72]

6 minutes ago, stickman said:

Wow. Will purchase everything you release!
Eyeing that ice maker!

Thank you, Appreciate the support!

Ice maker will be up in the near future.

[Mjag07 4]

Im right there with ya David !!

[stickman 34]

These are the kinds of tools I as houdini noob and  - ahem - technically limited user hope for. I hope enough people also see the value, so that your time is honored.

[Vexosaur 72]

First update! Also did some bug fixes.

Available Here:
https://gum.co/zWFNX

Slight change to pricing, still 'Pay what you want' for Non-commercial but now has a (low) minimum price for indie licence. Anyone who has already picked it up should have access to both licences still.

[stickman 34]

nothing directly related to your cool tool, but fascinating reference... check how the branches rise in this timelapse:
trees, timelapse

[mestela 586]

Looks fantastic Matt!

You might've seen these course notes from siggraph last year, lots of interesting stuff:

http://web340.server8.webgo24.de/pirk_info/projects/plant_life/resources/Modeling_Plant_Life.pdf

In particular Soeren Pirk's work:

https://vimeo.com/user6602111/videos

 

 

 

[Vexosaur 72]

7 hours ago, mestela said:

Looks fantastic Matt!

You might've seen these course notes from siggraph last year, lots of interesting stuff:

http://web340.server8.webgo24.de/pirk_info/projects/plant_life/resources/Modeling_Plant_Life.pdf

In particular Soeren Pirk's work:

https://vimeo.com/user6602111/videos

 

 

 

Thanks Matt!

I haven't seen them before, really interesting stuff. I've been debating starting from scratch with a method similar to Anastasia Opara's, which seems very similar to this.

https://vimeo.com/229252148 

 

[astrand 2]

I have a quick question. What is the ID attribute used for in this tool? I'm looking through the geo spreadsheets of the examples but I'm having trouble finding one that isn't a complete zero or negative one.

[Vexosaur 72]

1 hour ago, astrand said:

I have a quick question. What is the ID attribute used for in this tool? I'm looking through the geo spreadsheets of the examples but I'm having trouble finding one that isn't a complete zero or negative one.

It's for when you use the loop count to make multiple plants/trees so the forest maker can sort them out.

[astrand 2]

Hello, I have been using your foliage tool for a while and I really am satisfied with its results.

However, I mainly work with lower resolution geometry in my asset pipeline and it can be rather tricky to create realistic looking low poly trees with the tools available. So recently I have been trying to come up with a way to extend the product to generate low poly trees for use in real-time visualization projects, games and use in much larger distant forest scenes.

In the interest of improving the flexibility of the tool for everyone, I would like to give you my design document for this solution.

You (the creator of this tool) have my full expressed permission to use the design however you like.

Thank you for the wonderful product.

FoliageAtlasHoudini.pdf

(Edit: Just after posting I realized there might be some minor issues with the "Only Branch Ends" and "Delete Point Chance" options in the curve maker and the Noise and Smoothing in the tree/grass maker since it would come after the card setup node. one possible solution would be to feed the branch starting point data through these nodes as another input and apply the same rules and procedures, then before feeding the data back into the card finalize nodes second input. As for the UVs you can generate all of the cards and run the bake rig and tree cards through a UV layout node after being generated but before being scattered (this should work as long as the low poly bake geo and tree cards and the same UV island space.) 

Edited October 14, 2017 by astrand
Noticed an issue. Theorized a solution.

[Vexosaur 72]

5 hours ago, astrand said:

Hello, I have been using your foliage tool for a while and I really am satisfied with its results.

However, I mainly work with lower resolution geometry in my asset pipeline and it can be rather tricky to create realistic looking low poly trees with the tools available. So recently I have been trying to come up with a way to extend the product to generate low poly trees for use in real-time visualization projects, games and use in much larger distant forest scenes.

In the interest of improving the flexibility of the tool for everyone, I would like to give you my design document for this solution.

You (the creator of this tool) have my full expressed permission to use the design however you like.

Thank you for the wonderful product.

FoliageAtlasHoudini.pdf

(Edit: Just after posting I realized there might be some minor issues with the "Only Branch Ends" and "Delete Point Chance" options in the curve maker and the Noise and Smoothing in the tree/grass maker since it would come after the card setup node. one possible solution would be to feed the branch starting point data through these nodes as another input and apply the same rules and procedures, then before feeding the data back into the card finalize nodes second input.) 

Glad you have been enjoying the tools!

This is a really good idea and nice design document! Haven't had a lot of time to work on this lately but when I do get some more time I would definitely like to add options for baking it down to cards.

So much I want to do, so little time.  

[Pancho 14]

Quick questions: Can your tools be altered or are the nodes somehow locked?

Cheers
Tom

Edited October 30, 2017 by Pancho

[Vexosaur 72]

3 hours ago, Pancho said:

Quick questions: Can your tools be altered or are the nodes somehow locked?

Cheers
Tom

Yeah they can, just right click the node and allow editing of content. 

[Pancho 14]

Cool! Thx!

[astrand 2]

I made a procedural game ready palm tree for a project using the foliage tool: https://vimeo.com/244944326

While it is still a work in progress, I just thought I would share my results. (Not planning on redistributing the meshes on a storefront, but I am thinking about making a tutorial series in the future)

My tree is not intended to be photorealistic, my art is meant to have a more stylized and clean appearance. (or at least that is how I excuse myself)

The tree shown is roughly 25,000 vertices at it's highest LOD. (and currently only LOD) it is aimed at PC/Console level specs (although you could easily scale it down for mobile)

The foliage tools (which received some slight modifications related to point colors and some minor bug fixes) were used for growing the tree, generating the trunk geometry and generating the high-poly palm frond (which was then baked out in substance designer)

And thanks to the power of Houdini additional post/pre-processing was very straightforward and opened the door for some creative uses of the tool, being able to readily edit geometry after generating plants is something I really like about this foliage tool when compared to other tree tools... (cough... SpeedTree)

 

Definitely looking forward to modeling more plants in the future, this digital asset opened up soo many possibilities and really streamlined plant modeling for my workflow.

Happy to answer any questions.

Edited November 29, 2017 by astrand

[Vexosaur 72]

19 hours ago, astrand said:

I made a procedural game ready palm tree for a project using the foliage tool: https://vimeo.com/244944326

While it is still a work in progress, I just thought I would share my results. (Not planning on redistributing the meshes on a storefront, but I am thinking about making a tutorial series in the future)

My tree is not intended to be photorealistic, my art is meant to have a more stylized and clean appearance. (or at least that is how I excuse myself)

The tree shown is roughly 25,000 vertices at it's highest LOD. (and currently only LOD) it is aimed at PC/Console level specs (although you could easily scale it down for mobile)

The foliage tools (which received some slight modifications related to point colors and some minor bug fixes) were used for growing the tree, generating the trunk geometry and generating the high-poly palm frond (which was then baked out in substance designer)

And thanks to the power of Houdini additional post/pre-processing was very straightforward and opened the door for some creative uses of the tool, being able to readily edit geometry after generating plants is something I really like about this foliage tool when compared to other tree tools... (cough... SpeedTree)

 

Definitely looking forward to modeling more plants in the future, this digital asset opened up soo many possibilities and really streamlined plant modeling for my workflow.

Happy to answer any questions.

Man that's awesome, would be really interested to see your workflow and you are more than welcome to release a tutorial.  Hopefully I'll have some more time to work on this soon, it's been on the back burner for awhile.  Will also be interesting to implement some of the new features in 16.5, like the UV preserving polyreduce and updated UV tools.  

Edited November 29, 2017 by Aragatory
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