I have recently taken an interest in tree generation, so I decided to make my own system in geo nodes.
I focused on specifically a pine tree generator, however you can probably do quite a lot with the system as it is already.
This is what the base tree looks like.
I build the tree by making a Trunk Mesh, and then generating Branches on that. Then I generate Twigs on the Branches, and leaves on the Twigs. Quite straightforward.
I also have a node group that allows you to add some twigs as planes with transparency such as this:
But thats not all, since I wanted to create a generator that allows users to optimize for large scale environments, I had the idea: what if I generate the tree as a point cloud? Render times would be blazing fast cause there would be no transparency involved.
This is only 24.6k points, and for far away trees I think that would work pretty good. This point cloud is also generated with one click based off of the tree you allready have made, so you can switch between the different resolutions.
Very cool. I love the realism you’ve achieved, especially on the first model. The version with leaf pictures is still very convincing as well and would work well on mid distance. I agree the point cloud version could work on larger distances. Is it possible to mix these methods based on distance to camera dynamically?
I think it should be possible to switch between the models, especially now with the new camera info node in geo-nodes.
However I still need to work on the consistency of the models. Right now the version that uses the transparency planes doesnt look quite like the full poly version, but I think its mostly to do with tweaking the materials until it looks right.
Thanks! I’ll probabily share it at one point or another. Whether it will be a freebie or a paid on depends on how much more time I spend developing it. (even if its paid it would only be a few bucks, and would probably have a free version either way)
