Fractal Tree Maker for SketchUp - Free add-on
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Dave...youve got me confused now.....how did you explode the tree without seeing it?
But anyway, there is no point in exploding the tree unless you are using it in a renderer like Podium [in which case the square shadow turns into a realistic shadow after rendering]
At the moment, the trees dont cast shadows in SU....unless exploded....and by doing that you also loose the 'face me' capability.Oh, and Id loose the roots....looks a bit like one of those plastic Xmas trees
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the spread control still results in a trunk that smoothly tapers from the base, which is fairly unrealistic for trees like pines which begin to taper farther up from the ground.
I am also experiencing some double grouping with the created components where they have a group inside the component- not sure if this is desirable behavior
Also thought I should mention here, this plugin works hand in hand with "component spray" ruby to create fast environments: rendered in podium
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Mirjman, that sprayed image looks great!
I dont know a lot about DCs but given that its really easy to produce leaf variations on one tree....would it be possible to make a DC that could display the whole range of seasons?
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Yes Stu, You can also have different growth stages too. You can do this by having any number of variants occupying the same space and use the DC attributes to specify which one is visible. The file itself would be quite large, but the performance would only be the same as if the visible form was the sole element. I haven't tested how multi-part DCs export to Kerky etc. but when exported to another format, only the visible element gets exported.
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Yeah Stu, that would be pretty easy. You could create all 4 seasons and then combine them in a DC. Then you could have a pull down option as to what season to display. You could also creat a series of heights for each season, then make a menu that would let you choose what age to show during what season. All of this is also do-able by some tricky layer management too though if you don't want to dig into DC's
Chris
Alan beat me to it
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(We were just talking about what to do about seasons about an hour ago)
Although we are all looking for a good use for Dynamic Components, the layer idea might be better.
You could have just 4 layers, the same in each component, and then change the season for all plants at the same time.
Also, we could make a generator which allows you to specify bark and leaf images for each season and make all 4 seasons at the same time, and create the component with all 4 seasons in one step.
And, of course, we could do the same with age - generating images for 2, 5, 1- and 15 years for each plant.
Al Hart
IRender nXt from Render Plus -
I think I agree that seasons through layer management might make more sense here because it would be a universal change. DC asettings are per DC. So each tree would need to be changed separately. Or they would need to ALL be in one container component that could then pass on the season information to each tree in the model. But I think the layers might work better. Although the layers could get bulky if you start specifying 4 tree ages and 4 seasons. That's 16 layers. But I guess its not that bad for the great functionality it would provide.
Chris
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This is exciting! The idea of changing seasons is great. What if there were some magical way to tie a dynamic component into sketchup's shadow date control, then hypothetically you could animate the changing of the seasons!
Also, I'm still curious about flowering.......is it possible to add a feature for this?
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@stu said:
Dave...youve got me confused now.....how did you explode the tree without seeing it?
But anyway, there is no point in exploding the tree unless you are using it in a renderer like Podium [in which case the square shadow turns into a realistic shadow after rendering]
At the moment, the trees dont cast shadows in SU....unless exploded....and by doing that you also loose the 'face me' capability.Oh, and Id loose the roots....looks a bit like one of those plastic Xmas trees
Stu . . .I didn't see it in Podium, that 's what I meant. When I exploded for a Podium view, It didn't render shadows at all. I will keep playing with it. and that was my first tree with this program. you're abso. Right. the Roots are bad. Walmart Xmas tree was my first thought as well. But I was just seeing how to do it and what it offered.
Thx,
D
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i'm unable to install. is anyone else having issues? it said i was missing a certain .dll file and to reinstall. I tried that a few times, to no avail. then all of a sudden my license for v7 says its expired?!
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@gaganraj said:
i'm unable to install. is anyone else having issues? it said i was missing a certain .dll file and to reinstall. I tried that a few times, to no avail. then all of a sudden my license for v7 says its expired?!
We just posted a new version.
Give it a try.
If it says it is missing a DLL, try to note which one it is.
Downloads are available from:
Al Hart
IRender nXt from Render Plus -
We uploaded a new version which:
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Clips the roots at the ground - right now we make an image which includes roots below the ground. That is useful sometimes, but much too confusing.
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Creates the image (and component) so that the center of the bottom of the trunk is at the center of the image (and component)
Downloads are available at: http://www.renderplus.com/pdf/download.htm
Al Hart
IRender nXt from Render Plus -
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@earthmover said:
This is exciting! The idea of changing seasons is great. What if there were some magical way to tie a dynamic component into sketchup's shadow date control, then hypothetically you could animate the changing of the seasons!
Also, I'm still curious about flowering.......is it possible to add a feature for this?
I chatted with the developer today. He plans to add seasons someday - but he isn't quite sure how he would do it. I suggested allowing 4 leaf images per tree and using one for each season. But he says you will also want to change leaf density, size, etc. So for now, we are going to take an approach were you create different .ArPlant definitions for each season and we will combine 2 or more into a single plant by layer.
I also, didn't make much progress in implementing flowers or other items on a tree. One idea would be to create a leaf which is really two leaves and a flower and see if that offers any promise.
Al Hart
IRender nXt from Render Plus -
Hi. I am running SU7 and can not get the shadows to work in SU Podium. They are just always black boxes. Is there something I am missing. I have done everything that was listed above, such as exploding them. But I can not get them to put correct shadows in a render. Thanks for your help. You are doing a great job.
~Jeff
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Jeff, I'm going to take a guess that the reason you are not seeing a shadow could be because you have not created a ground plane for the shadow to cast onto maybe?
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Jeff, Im not sure what the problem is....you seem to be having the same trouble as Dave.
What Im doing is exploding, and then for some reason exploding again until the component bounding box is gone and there is just a line outline left...I usually group the image for easier editing but it doesnt seem essential. At this stage you should be left with a square shadow.
With Podium 1.6, I work with the 'dark' shadow slider set to 8 or 10....PNGs seem to produce soft shadows when rendered but I have yet to see a square shadow after rendering.
Im using SU6, SU7, Win XP and VistaEDIT:....This will ONLY work with Podium 1.6 beta
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OK i just downloaded this and tried it, but it is killing my computer. Do you have to have a beast of a computer to run this plugin? It literally took 5 minutes to start up and it was so slow running that is was practically unusable. I dont know if it is an installation issue, because it does work and pull up, it just doesnt work fast enough. Anyone had similar issues?
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My attempt at some flowering Crape Myrtles. I photoshopped flowers in with some leaves. Worked out okay. As far as the Podium shadows....worked good for me. Took some playing with the Dark and Light sliders.....believe it or not, I got the best results from having the light slider set down to 10 and the dark slider up to 35 with "use sun for shading" checked. With the sliders the other way, I found the shadows too faint to really see. (using 1.6)
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so what is the upper limit of Tree-ness to this thing? I was doing a conifer shaped tree, with some foliage of course set it to Medium. SU and RP Bogs down and I have to restart. Anyone else having this trouble?
D
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Al, is there any way of having the final render dictated by the view you set the tree to in the first screen? I tested a sample tree with just a single root....so I could tell the orientation...and it seems that whichever way you rotate the tree in the first window, it always renders from the same fixed point, with the root pointing to about 5 o clock.
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