You can’t and that’s the point…the way Blender’s operators work is that when you “update” one setting (when using the old UI) it will start the process all over again (Blender doesn’t know how to “only update the changed properties” so it will essentially delete the object and start from scratch). The panel UI gives the user control of when to update the object.
If you wanted to however, you could add an update operator that automatically deleted the active object if it’s name started with “tree” (to allow for tree.001 etc.), then called create_tree(). This would require you to set the tree to be the active, selected object when you finish generating. Use this to set the active object:
By the way, for organizational purposes, you CAN add multiple panels if you like. Then instead of a layout.box you could have collapsible panels in the ‘tree’ tab.
I’ve just been having another play around with this wonderful little Script!
I had a thought for a possible new feature to increase the unwrap functionality
It’s obvious that unwrapping a large mesh (Over 100,000 Verts) Can take a looooong time! So i thought, is it possible to add the option of just adding the seams to the mesh, rather than just unwrapping. This way, if the user has a highly detailed tree, they will be able to tick a box allowing the script only add the seams, enabling them to unwrap the mesh in seperate chunks of the mesh one at a time once they have finalized the tree
And also you could possibly change the way your script deals with the object’s UVs and unwrap the mesh in sections one at a time if thats possible?
I’m Guessing that would be more efficient than unwrapping a huge mesh all at once?
***i.e;
1st: Unwrap Trunk
2nd: Unwrap 1st branch splits
3rd: Unwrap 2nd branch splits
etc, etc.
Unless this is already the method you are already using to unwap the trees, lol. in which case ignore the previous part of the message
But i would be eternally grateful if you could add the option to just generate the seams without unwrapping!
It would make dealing with a huge tree’s UVs Much easier!
Alright, I just added an issue on the github page for only adding seams…I will implement that soon.
Edit:
Finished! I’ll let you know when its rolled out in the next release!
Edit 2:
The next release is out, you can get it here:
Also, check out our feature roadmap on our wiki:
Everything on the roadmap was accomplished AFTER the project was moved to github, so if you’ve only downloaded it on blender artists so far, you’ll be stunned to see what Maxime and I have already coded (its all listed in the feature roadmap).
BTW A brief word about your manners:
Due to my faith, it is highly offensive to me when others speak so lightly and out of context about (what I believe to be) eternal beings and places such as God, hell, and heaven. Although I understand that many do not share this belief, I would greatly appreciate it if you would honor it and edit your previous post accordingly (other users can still get the point that you appreciate or don’t appreciate something without that language).
Remarkable development and contribution. Deeply thank you as I have a special place in thought for ‘trees’ and hope to use this in a personal project. I am more the artist than coder, but I was curious about some Python code, and downloaded and installed Pycharm, (https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/)as I saw one of the Blender developers mention using it. Just for fun I opened you .py file and wandered thru the code. I am not sure if it would be helpful, but it did “flag” a bunch of stuff, mostly pep8 compliance, but it may be useful, so I thought to mention it. Thank you again, best to you on the development.
@Graphics_Dev - No offense intended. I use that word on a whim sometimes, with no intent to relate to anything spiritual/religious. I didn’t even consider that anyone would take offence to that word, but seen as though you made a point of it, i have changed my message accordingly.
But to be honest, i do think it is a very minor thing to take “High” offense to, when you must know that i was in no way using that word to insite any offence or with any malice whatsoever, It was simply a word that i occasionly use when i am typing, and also occasionally in speech. But for future reference i will avoid using it on any of your threads from now on.
But again, please make note that i was NOT trying to be offensive in any way.
An addon thread is not really any place for random religious references anyway, so we should avoid debating about that (less it risks derailing a thread about what could be the best tree generating solution ever seen in Blender).
On the addon itself, the twig generation is a very nice touch (so any tree now looks far nicer than with earlier versions), though I think we still need the option to randomize values such as branch length (not to mention it would be nice to directly control the length of twigs as well).
@Jamie B Thank you! I understand that many others don’t share my beliefs and that you weren’t trying to offend. No hard feelings.
@Ace Dragon I wasn’t trying to start a debate…I directed a message at Jamie. Perhaps I should have pm’d him. Anyway, this thread is “old” now anyway. The add-on’s official thread is now here as Maxime mentioned.
@paulhart2 Yes, PyCharm will help with pep-8 a lot…I’ve fixed most of those problems, but you may be noticing line numbers that are too long as well? The Blender team has said that the maximum line length as defined by pep-8 is too restrictive for Blender development and therefore not mandatory. You can read about it here:
I don’t know if I missed some parameter but I mainly would like to see two things:
more control over the shape of the trunk, in order to add more details in the shape and make it more organic.
the roots right now are quite “straight” apart from the junctions. Would be nice to be able to put some noise in there like for the branches. The roots in the image above have been manually tweaked.
The roots generation definitely need some work, I will improve it at some point.
When you say “more control over the shape of the trunk”, are you talking about the way the trunk grows, or micro details like bark or bumps ?
Not really micro details that I think is better to leave at the shader. I am talking about bigger details, like having a trunk that is not shaped like a perfect cylinder, or having major imperfection in the trunk shape.
as you see here we have some bigger shape going on on the trunk that would be great to have generated in the geometry. Of course I have no idea how hard would be implementing something like this… just having some idea!
Another thing that would be really cool would be the ability to drive the growth of the tree with curves. You know just the main direction of the tree. Here I had to try several random seeds before finding a shape I liked, so being able to draw a curve to give the general direction of the tree would be a great feature I think. Of course, same thing here, I have no idea if I am asking something really difficult!
This is quite difficult to achieve through code; i guess it would be feasible using the shrinkwrap modifier, but considering that is it quite easy to do on sculpt mode, I think it would be a waste of time.
Maybe it is a known thing, but I noticed that there might be some issue with the rotation of the leaves on the generated twig. As you can see in this screenshot the rotation of some of the planes is not correct. Of course fixing it by hand is not a big problem, still I thought it was worth mentioning.
