Hi all,
I just released 
CanTree
an online 2d tree generator for you guys to use 
Mini video tutorial
It can be useful to make billboard trees for distant forests in your 3d scenes.
Check it out and tell me what you think is good / missing.
Thatās really nice if you need a quick tree. Very nice to make it free to use.
My suggestions for improvement:
tree shapes - they are somewhat limited, no control on where the branches start and no conivers and no control over the trunk, all my trees usually look like dwarfen trees, I am unable to create a tall tree when I need one. Might be a user error though =)
light control - it would be nice to set a light direction so they somewhat fit a scene light later
image size - iĀ“d really prefere it if the tree would fit the billboard size. now you set a billboard texture size and if the tree gets too large you got to make him again on a bigger image. no biggy, just uncomfy.
IĀ“d vote that you take your experience from the city generator and make a nice and shiny 3d tree plugin 
Nice, and your website has a great layout btw (love the boxes for this and Suicidator!). Have you considerd doing a 3D plugin for Blender on trees? NgPlant is good, but very heavy, and causes a lot of problems when animating. Alternatives would be cool!
And Arexma, creating bigger trees seems to be about branch length; itās the core ābranchesā or stem as well as smaller ones in that variable!
Yeh, I noticed, but it seems there is no real trunk control. It looks like the tree algorithm has no trunk, but it is made from branches only and the trunk is overlapping branches. ThatĀ“s also why I only get dwarfen trees 
If you make the branche thicker youĀ“ll see that the trunk is made of branches.
I might be wrong though.
Ohhhā¦ yeah, it seems that is correct. My trunks were just pretty straight. I do seem, at closer inspection, to be producing the most adorable bonzai trees, too Dammit, now I want a Zen gardenā¦
Thx guys for the great feedback!
For the tree size I see what you mean, increase branches length, thickness, and tree complexity.
But itās true the control is limited. Iāll see how this can be fixed.
For the light, itās a good idea. Right now I simulate ambient occlusion, but it would be useful to have a general light color and direction. I didnāt think about it, great idea!
For the billboard size fit, that would be cool as well. I put it on the todo list.
I donāt plan to do a 3d blender script right now. I think this script has a great potential, although the controls are very obscure for the general user.
If I do a 3d tree generator, itād be online with WebGL. That would be a challenging project for me 
The trunk and sub-branches are built step by step, this is why they look like theyāre made of branches.
Oh that sounds sweet, IĀ“ll testdrive that one for sure.
Thank you! I will trial it now!
if only a 3d version with obj. export would this beā¦
btw its cool : D
Itās great! But when I click on the Save Image option, it opens a new tab and displays the generator again instead of an image that I can save to my computer.
@re-tep
The trees are full 2d
@SSimposible
Hey thx for pointing it out!!!
I recently updated the page to include images hosted on CDN, so that it is faster to load, especially for first time visitors.
But it appears that there is a browsers built-in security restriction I wasnāt aware of, that makes it impossible.
The page is now back to its previous state, and is working again.
But I will study this, I donāt fully understand that restrictionā¦
My web host seems to be down quite often lately.
Sorry about that. It should be ok now.
I would love to check this out, but when I go to your site it displays a page with no clickable links on it.
Itās working great but I donāt get the deal with the canvas size. No matter whether I make it big or small the trees remains the same size and the trees are always āspawningā near the bottom of the canvas and so some branches get cut off by it no matter how big I make it.
Really great job though, this is awesome
@NinthJake
Thanks, Iām glad you like it
Increase the canvas size, and also the branches length and thickness.
It turned out that I had a wrong web browser for the applicationā¦ I switched to Firefox and I am now able to access your tree generator. Iām going to play with it for a bit nowā¦
Unfortunately the domain and the tree generator are not available anymore. has it been moved to somewhere else?
Its availble via Wayback
https://web.archive.org/web/20111125234642/http://arnaud.ile.nc/cantree/generator.php
Yes the web host closed the domain some time ago.
I restored CanTree to its former glory
=> HERE
I improved the presentation and layout just a little. More features and more control will come later.