I get a warning every time I open the file, asking me IF I’M SURE I want to run this. Weird thing is, it doesn’t seem to make a difference whether I run it or not.
But anyway, it’s pretty straightforward, though I still have yet to delve into the super fine details. It starts out with two distribute instance nodes. The first distributes little icospheres across the surface of a canopy mesh, the 2nd distributes cubes in place of the icospheres, then transformed downwards a bit so it slices off about 2/3rds of the icospheres. These 2/3rd slices connect to a distribute instances node that the spawn the highlight leaves, while the untouched spheres spawn the background and regular leaves through two other distribute nodes.
What I have yet to figure out is why he’s using an extra fancy distribute instance node, and how the shadowing works. I know it uses the proximity of the icospheres to influence the colors on the leaf shader, but WHAT it’s doing, I still have to figure out.
Anyway, long story short, this shouldn’t be too difficult to implement on my trees. All I’d have to do is add an extra stage to the trees, with the leaves acting as the spawning mesh. Like so…
