TreeGen
HowTo
Run the
TreeGen script. The following requester will appear:
1. Trunk width
This setting determines the width of the trunk on the ground level. It's suggested that you use real world scale when setting up TreeGen.
2. Sides
This determines
the base resolution of the tree trunk mesh (before subdivision). Use caution
with the setting - there's a potential to make a very dense mesh if this is
set high.
3. Segments
This sets the
number of segments in the tree trunk between each iteration. You can have
a rough idea of the resulting tree height by multiplying the number of
Segments, Segment length and iterations together.
4. Segment length
This determines
the length of each segment.
5. Segment shrink
This setting
is used to adjust the relative thickness between the root of the tree and
the branches. Higher settings will create thinner branches, and setting of
0 will make the branch thickness equal to the root thickness (blocky look
i might add ;-).
6. Branching
This sets the
number of new brances created in each iteration. If the setting is 3 or higher,
a random number between 2 and the setting is used in each iteration process
- so, with setting of 5, you will have 2 to 5 new branches / iteration.
7. Branching mode
"Spawn" will
make the branches grow from continuous tree trunk, "Divide" will split the
trunk with each iteration.
8. Iterations
When talking
about TreeGen, an iteration means dividing the trunk, or growing new branches
from it. Higher numbers look better, but will create a very dense mesh.
9. Spread
This setting
controls the "fatness" of the tree shape. Small numbers will create skinny
trees, big number will result in more bush like appearance.
10. Trunk <> Branches (Bias)
This setting
controls the overall appearance of the tree. Low values will have emphasis
on the trunk, high values on the branches.
11. Shape variation
This is a curvyness
/ straightness setting for the tree. The bigger the number, the more jitterburg
in the tree shape.
12. Subdivide tree mesh
As the name states,
you can use this setting to subdivide a rough tree shape to more closeup
friendly appearance ;-)
13. Leave clusters
"Polys" will
create an individual polygon for each leaf. Looks nice, but watch that polycount
;-) Almost identical results can be obtained when using "Clusters", and setting
up a transparency or clip map texture for the leaves, with less rendering
overhead. "Blob" will create just one big clump of leaves - usefull for low-rez
background trees.
Using veins as
the clip / transparency texture for the leave clusters has proven to be quite
succesfull. At later point, i will try to add a feature to TreeGen, which
can apply these. For now, you will just have to settle for texture presets...
14. Leave cluster size
As it says -
15. Leave cluster resolution
The leave clusters
are actually tessellated spheres, copied to the tip of each branch. This setting
controls the tessellation level of the clusters.
16. leave cluster randomness
Setting of 0
will give you beautiful, perfect spheres as your leave clusters. I dunno if
there's a tree like this in real world though ;-) The higher the setting,
the more the clusters are displaced.
17. Leave poly size
This only functions
if cluster type is set to Polys. The control is used to scale the individual
leaves.
18 Leave jitter mode
This is a setting
that can affect the look of the leaves quite strongly. I suggest you just
experiment with different settings with this, as well as leave cluster randomness
and poly size. Have fun!
19. Reset settings
Resets
the settings to factory defaults. Use this if your trees look really weird,
and you can't locate what setting is the one causing troubles...