[Plugin][$] 3D Tree Maker - New version 1.10.14

ppoublan

V 1.10.14 :
Fixed compatibility issues with SU 2016 and SU 2017

V 1.10.11 :
Fixed missing menu in some configurations

Minor release 1.10.09 published in PluginStore :
No big new feature, but many small improvements and changes trying to make it easier to use with more realism.

The way tree shapes are built has been slightly changed and a new tree shape have been added (pear).
Most of existing tree templates have been updated, trying to make them look also more realistic, like for the Fir tree for example.
When you select a plant / tree within the list, the list is ordered by the height of the plant. So you will find grass at the beginning and tall trees at the end.
Few new trees and plants templates have been added (Some are only available to registered users).
Default UV mapping of most of leaves and flowers components have been changed in order to allow applying great textures.
New leaves and flowers textures with or without alpha mask have been added.
New leaves and flowers shapes have been added.

Remember you can force update of tree definitions already existing in your Sketchup models with the use of “Reload tree configuration from file templates” menu.

Minor release 1.10.04 published in PluginStore :

Fixed issues with ctrl clic and color selection on Mac
new strings for locale languages
add another method to place trees/plants on surfaces

Version 1.10 :
New features :

Make Grass
Change all trees to proxies and Redraw all
Ctrl click to place multiple trees at once
Colorset for leaves and flowers
New and updated trees and plant templates
and some more parameters (leaves reduction amongst branches, place at the start only, displacement, ...)

See youtube videos for demos :

Making grass :
http://youtu.be/ZS0iTWQmSnY

Managing instances and proxies :
http://youtu.be/dDXp4sXd-DU

New colors and texture features :
http://youtu.be/WHe_m9-ac3w

Known issues (tests on going) :

colors selection from SU material on Mac
ctrl click on Mac

Version 1.05 :

added Sketchup 2014 compatibility

Version 1.03 :

fixed issues on Mac
added language translation files for Spain, Portugal and China

Dear all,

I’m pleased to inform you of an new version of the 3D Tree Maker plugin for Sketchup.
Here are the main changes and improvements. Hope you will like it.
It can be downloaded from the Skechucation Plugin Store and from http:http://www.3darcstudio.com/downloads-files/24-3d-tree-maker-sketchup-plugin.html
Enjoy.

Tool :
The create tree is now accessible as a tool with a button you can put in your toolbar. It allows you to place the tree directly where you want into your model and to preview a skeleton of the tree while placing it. The selection of the tree template definition is also more easy with the image preview of the template.

New Tree configuration web dialog :
This is the most important change. All the parameters to configure your tree are accessible into one window with parameters grouped by categories into tabs. Parameters can be changed using sliders, listboxes, colorpicker so hope more easier than the previous version. You can also redraw the tree from the webdialog to see the effects of the changes without leaving the configuration window.
As you will see there are a lot of parameters. Don’t be afraid, this is just to give you complete control on your tree appearance. Each parameter can now be defined for each level and a third level of branches can be created. If you want to experiment different parameters and understand how they affect the tree appearance, a good way to start is to use the “tuto00” tree, that has most parameters reset to zero or default value. This way you will easily see impacts of the changes you make. There is no documentation available now, it will be added in the future.

Colors and textures
You can set colors, use jpg textures or transparent png textures for each level and each object of the tree from the webdialog tree configuration window. A specific leaf component called “square” is useful to apply flat png leaf textures. Tree Maker comes with some shapes and textures ready to use, and you can add your own. (of course you can still change, add or apply different textures or colors to the tree objects from SU as you make for any SU object).

Proxies :
Proxies are skeleton views of the trees, which are more “light” as they do not keep all the faces and components needed to draw the tree. You can switch at any time from complete tree views to proxies in one clic from the contextual menu. The main usage is to be able to keep tree definitions within your models without adding too much size to your files. You can draw the complete trees just when you need to render or make images of your model, and switch back to proxies to save your work.

New tree templates :
During tests and development I created some new tree templates and bushes or flower plants that you may like. Have a look at them and use it as a starting point to create your own trees. It contains roses plant, bamboo, fig tree, and many others.

Language :
Support of different languages has been added to the code. There are only an English and a French version now. But if you are volunteer to create a translation for your language let me know. The process is very simple (string replacement within text file) . You will get a free license if you provide a translation into your language (other than the one already supported) .

Kind of "I’m lucky" feature called "randomize" :
Not sure if very useful, but it allowed me to create some test examples. It randomly sets most of the tree parameters to create a complete new tree definition. Sometimes you may get strange results absolutely unrealistics, but It may give you ideas to build different trees.

Free/Paid version :
Bad news, the plugin is not anymore completely free.
Good news :

All features are available into the free version. There is nothing you can not do with the free version.
The only difference is you will have to wait 15 seconds before the tree starts drawing when you change parameters with the free version and you need to click one button more.
So if you like the tool or use it often, you may want to remove this delay. The license can be bought from http:http://www.3darcstudio.com for 10 euros (via paypal).
Those providing very good tree templates made with the plugin will also receive a free license.

Known Issues :
Compatibility : The plugin has been developed with Sketchup 8 Pro running on Windows and has been also tested with Sketchup 2013. It should also work with Mac versions, but has not been tested. Let us know if you encounter issues with these environments.
Performance : We made efforts to improve performance, but drawing trees may be very slow. First thing to do to improve performance is to close the Stetchup explorer window. You can also build your trees on a new empty model. We also added proxies features to allow you to keep more trees in the same model without increasing too much the model size. Last, do not use shadows, fog, and complex display options when building trees (you can activate these options at the end when you want to render final image of your model).
Tree not displayed when placing it into the model with the tool : When placing a new tree, it is not always displayed if the model is empty. Move the mouse over existing objects in your model or near the origin of the model to see the skeleton appears.
Web dialog is blanked (looks like empty window) : Some times the web dialog is blanked. If you move the mouse over, it displays partly. I have seen similar issues with other tools so I do not think it is related to a bug in the plugin code but more to a problem of SU/WebDialog management.
Other bugs or errors will be discovered. Do not hesitate to escalate issues you may have, on this forum or by mail to info@3darcstudio.com.

Krisidious

Thanks,

So a few questions...

does this make a tree or just insert a component?
are there any variables, like height or width or anything like that?

massimo

Wow! Looks really interesting and it seems to work fine. Thank you.

@unknownuser said:

are there any variables, like height or width or anything like that?

Right click on a tree and you can make almost infinite adjustments and slight variations on a template.
Just a question: I got a ruby console every time I start SU. Is that normal?

ppoublan

Hi,
Yes, this is not just a component loader, but really creates trees. You can adjust parameters with right clicks (see the pdf for doc). Leaves are components, so you can change/update them after creating your tree. I built 10 different templates to illustrate what it can do, but you can create your own tree templates and save them. I'm really interesting in seeing new trees you can create with it playing with parameters.
The console ruby when starting Sketchup is something I used during development to debug and forgot to remove from the script. Will make the change for the next minor release.
Yours
Pascal

massimo

Another thing I noticed: if you make a tree and then immediately purge the model (here I've used TIG's plugin), you'll have a lot of purged elements.

Maybe those extra elements are needed for the variations?

Krisidious

AWESOME...

massimo

A couple of things more:
-the trunk & branches faces are reversed. Anyway the materials seem to be applied on both front & back faces, so not a big deal.
-oddly when you export a model in Thea for example, the scale of some elements seems different (?). See the picture below.

ppoublan

Thanks you very much for your tests and feedbacks.

Scaling : I think it should be escalated to the export/render code to be corrected. It looks like (I’m not sure but suspect, maybe some experts could verify) it has to do with the internal way scales are stored within Sketchup. When you use a transformation matrix, the 16th parameter is a scaling factor that apply to the object in all directions. I think this parameter is not always checked and used by all export/render programs. They only use the xscale,yscale and zcale parameter (1st, 6th, and 11th). Maybe it can explain the differences. I will look if I could enforce the update of the other scaled parameters into the component instance definition.

Here is an extract from the excellent book “Aumatic Sketchup” that describes this :
Chapter 4 explained how to create scaling transformations using the scaling method of the Geom::Transformation class. This method accepts a scaling constant, and when you apply the resulting Transformation to an entity, the entity's size will be multiplied by that amount. Let's see the corresponding matrix when we multiply an entity's size by five:
t = Geom::Transformation.scaling 5.0
AdvGeom.print_mat t
g 1.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
0.000 1.000 0.000 0.000
0.000 0.000 1.000 0.000
0.000 0.000 0.000 0.200
This matrix looks a lot like the identity matrix, but the lower-right element is set to 0.2, which is the reciprocal of the scaling constant (1/5.0 = 0.2). Changing this single element changes the size of a transformed entity, and we can check this by creating a Transformation that shrinks an entity five-fold:

Purge of unused elements : yes some materials and components (leaves types) are created and loaded before building the tree to improve performance. I can add automatic deletion of unused elements at the end of the script, but with the risk to delete components loaded by the user or other apps. Do you think Its preferable to add this ? not a great work, very few lines to call.
Faces to be reversed, I have to make some more work to correct this. I’m adding this to the bug list.

Yours
Pascal

Krisidious

Is this SketchUp 2013 ready or is it Version 8 only?
Will it be added to the SCF Plugin Store?

CadFather

Pascal, works fine here - and the trees look great - if you run Thom's 'Cleanup', you can further save yourself 40000 to 60000 polygons. outrageous plugin, this is going to be perfect when 2014 64bit comes out.

Krisidious

I guess I can stop waiting on this...

(www.theplantfactory-tech.com)

massimo

@ppoublan said:

Thanks you very much for your tests and feedbacks.

Scaling : I think...

Purge of unused elements : yes some materials and components...

Faces to be reversed...

Yours
Pascal

Pascal:
-Scaling: yeah, maybe Tomasz or other exporter experts can have a look to that;
-Purge: no worries, running TIG's plugin is fine;
-Faces revesed: as i said not a big deal.

Here are some variations on an olive tree template. Just SU's hidden line style.

Krisidious

Fantastic Massimo...

on revered faces... while this should not be an issue in SU, some renderers will not show backfaces.

CadFather

an olive tree with 1.2 million polys - purged and cleaned went down to 900k, then simplified the leaf comp went further down to 85k. ..what a ruby!

PS (and that's the sat morning shopping, out of the window..)

massimo

@krisidious said:

Fantastic Massimo...

on revered faces... while this should not be an issue in SU, some renderers will not show backfaces.

But materials seem to be applied on both front and back faces, so this should not be an issue because renderers will "see" the mat on the front face anyway. However I agree that having front faces should be better.

driven

hi

working on mac mountain lion with SU v2013.

PM Chris Fullmer re the scaling, I think he may have an answer...

One request I would have is to allow loading from other Folders/Directories, it appears to be hard coded to Plugins Folder.

john

Krisidious

I think Lumion and Revizto don't show back faces unless they have updated the problem. Revizto has an option to turn them on.

Zacchia

Hi
Thanks, it's very nice! When open SU this console is also on every start. Why?

massimo

@zacchia said:

Hi
Thanks, it's very nice! When open SU this console is also on every start. Why?

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=476285#p476285

Zacchia

@massimo said:

@zacchia said:

Hi
Thanks, it's very nice! When open SU this console is also on every start. Why?

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=476285#p476285

OK, thanks!