GeoTree: Procedural Trees in Geometry Nodes

An extra scale feature might be redundant, but I agree with the rotation. I’ll add that in too.

…after I eat a late lunch.

I am playing with the splits and find scale and rotate very useful. You make one nice split then want another higher up, copy the node and scale/rotate the split is faster than resetting the points. Change the noise seed and they look great.

Ahh another thing is the draw trunk check box. Your node draws the trunk, if you use different split node in parallel you get multiple trunks on top of each other.

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This should be next on the big fix list. Though the angle of the trunk should influence the direction of the branch they still need to be roughly parallel to the ground. We need a slider to orient between the angle, and the ground.

…though it does look pretty nice as-is.

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I understand but I think you would have to put the slider in the branch node to offset the angles or the branches.

This is a bit weird but I will find a better methodology, your trunk and branches with a few (9!) split nodes:

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We’re so close to being able to make gnarly trees, I can almost taste the bark…

If there was a way to randomize the output of the duplicate elements node you have in there, we could make trees like that with a quarter of the nodes. Maybe we could do something with a realize instance node after the distribute, get some random rotation, noise, and length in there.

Yes I was messing around a lot and coming to the conclusion that it was to fiddly to do that way.

That is not to difficult, the only problem is that for the splits to look good they need a nice point to start (a knee shape).

I think 1 or 2 of those hero splits is about the maximum practically and the rest should be branches.
There is also the multi split node that I will go back to.

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I found out what what was confusing you about the preset shape.

Depending on the scale of the split their values are confusing, it did not confuse me because I was also using the scale input to scale the splits.

It was not until I appended the “create and shape” nodegroup on its own (without the scale input) into a new file for branches that I noticed this and yes it confessed me as well. (for branches the preset values are way to high) and the height input makes things even worse.

So you are right about getting rid of the preset shape and the height input, so that setting the values of the points are always logical and start at 000.

I still think the scale and rotation inputs are useful.

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Here. This is what I was working on last night. I still haven’t added a scale option to the forks yet, but you now have free euler rotation on it.

GeoTreeR_0.5.zip (3.2 MB)

That looks good except for one thing.
You did away with the set spline catmull rom node.
The splits look totally “square” and unnatural.
Here is a straight trunk and a split with no noise to show what I mean.

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I thought I popped that back in. Let me double-check it.

Edit: Okay, it’s back in. Though looking at it, there are some situations where you’d rather have some sharp angles over smooth curves. Wish you could expose the spline type on the node itself.

Yes maybe could be an option. I was getting “jaggedness” from the noise but at low resolutions the sharp angles can be effective.
There could be a checkbox to “smooth” angles.

Also (this is just personal taste so whatever) I think of the points as 0 origin 1 lowest 2 middle and 3 highest. I have to think twice when the end is the first point and the beginning the last.

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Yeah, that’s screwed me over a couple of times as well. I set it in reverse order because I figured the end point represented height/length, and was thus the most important of the three factors, deserving of getting the top spot.

I’ve since changed my mind. I’ll have the reverse reversed by the next update.

I am starting to feel guilty distracting you with all this. :pensive:

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Why? Suggestions and tweaks are primarily what this thread’s here for, and most of the stuff you’ve had issues with I’ve thought about changing myself. No reason to feel guilty.

And anyway, it’s all serving as a nice distraction from all the hard stuff I don’t want to deal with yet.

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Ok :slightly_smiling_face: but feel free to tell me to shut up if it gets to much :rofl:

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Oh, I will. :stuck_out_tongue:

Also, at some point, I intend to write up a big list of things I want to address in the not too distant future. If you want to add to it, knock yourself out.

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I had a play with your last version.
The only thing I changed in the nodes was to give the fork a catmull rom option with a smooth angles check box.

Just with one fork and tweaking the trunk points and split points to a Y shape, so they look like a fork not a weird branch that just sticks out. I also adjusted the branch start levels and leaf density.

I think this looks great, one fork already gives the tree a new dimension, So I am pretty happy how this has all turned out.

One thing that would be great is the ability to adjust the canopy on one side (in 3d) to avoid the branches crossing.

Oh …shut up Norman! there you go I said it myself :rofl:

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I did the same thing, though I converted it to a bezier curve with handles set to auto, and set it so that the smooth trees are the default, and you sharpen them through the checkbox.


Yup. This is on the list of difficult things I need to do, but I don’t yet know how to approach it, so I’ll do other stuff.

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Hey, I did it!

This already looks to be pretty informative. Why didn’t anyone ever tell me about tilt?

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