Could This Add-On Change Blender Trees FOREVER? (AnyTree Tutorial)

what's up guys Justin here with the CG essentials.com so in today's video we're going to check out a brand new add-on that allows you to create and generate trees using shapes and curves let's go ahead and just jump into it alright so any tree is a brand new add-on from Bad normals that basically does exactly what it sounds like it generates trees using shapes and so this is an interesting add-on um that kind of approaches trees in a little bit of a different way than what we've seen before so basically what it does is it gives you a few different tools that you can use in order to generate trees using different shapes using geometry as well as using curves that you can draw so let's go ahead and take a look at how this works so the first thing you want to do is you want to make sure that you've installed and enabled any Tree in order to be able to add a tree to your mesh and so the way that this works is you start with a shape so you can either start with a shape or a curve really so let's say for example that we wanted to start with just a cube so I'm just going to move this over maybe scale it down a bit and actually we'll probably want to move that back in a second I'll show you that I'll show you why in a second but right now what we've got is we've got this cube in here I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to take this Cube and I'm going to extrude the surface is up and I'm going to start scaling them out and basically I'm just creating a shape that I generally want my tree to follow and we can adjust this in a second but again I want to make sure that I've applied my rotation and scale and then what we can do is we can use any tree and we can select the option for add a new shape tree and so the first thing you'll notice when you do this is this looks a little bit weird so there's a few things about this that you're only going to want to be aware of first off this is going to use this object right here as the point from which your tree starts so that's why we want to make sure that this is actually over top of that right here so I'm just going to move this over so that it's aligned with this surface and notice how what we've got is we've got the tree start we've got the bounds or the source that the tree is created with and we've got the tree system now the tree system is basically where your options are going to be and notice how this is built on top of geometry nodes right now so if I take this whole thing notice how it still doesn't look very good good but if you take the tree detail and you start adding detail to it notice how it starts looking a lot better and basically what this is going to do is this is going to procedurally generate a tree that's going to start from wherever your tree start point is and it's going to kind of move things upward like this and so notice how if we make adjustments to our shape so let's say I was to tab in edit mode and scale this out for example so it's way wider notice how my tree is going to act different it's going to move differently than it would have otherwise so the shape that we have in here is really going to drive this okay so we're not limited by just having like a simple rectangular shape or anything like that so this is a more complex shape and we can go ahead and we can add our shape tree to this shape and then we can go into our settings and we can actually make a tree that's going to fit along with this more complex shape and so in this case the result is a little bit clunky but what you'd want to do is you'd want to come down here and you'd want to adjust the branch resolution like this this and so notice how when you bring your branch resolution down this is going to give you more of a smooth kind of like flowing Branch like this and so notice how when you bring that Branch resolution down to this value right here you're getting more curves and more smoothness but at the moment I want to show you the other way to create trees which is to use curves so let's say that we don't want these objects right here what we want to do instead is we want to add a tree using a curve so the way that we would do that is we can click the option for add a new curved tree and so notice how when we add a new curve tree it's automatically going to add that tree start in here but then we can come in here and we can sketch or Draw our tree so let's say for example I wanted a tree it's going to run this way but what I can do is I can come in here I can actually sketch the tree out like this and so what that's going to do is that's going to allow me to generate a tree that has the same kind of options as the other one right but this one is based on those curves and so again we can adjust things like our detail level up and remember that if you don't like things like the way that the trunk works you can try moving this tree start around and that's going to give you more of a base trunk right here so if you want to add something with curves you can use the curved tree function in here as well now in addition to having a bunch of different options for things that you can do in order to adjust what this does this gravity function for example is going to allow you to set like how far down this Falls and other things like that you can also adjust other things like the thickness of your branches right so you can bring your thickness up and down as well as the thickness of the tips of your branches so you can use this in order to set if those tips are going to come to a point or if they're going to kind of keep that same thickness and again if we wanted this to be smoother we can adjust that Branch resolution down here notice how when we do that that's going to do more subdividing of the more dividing of the branches that are created in here just like this and so you can come back in here and say for example that you didn't really like what this was doing you can come back in here and you can edit the curve so for example if I wanted my tree to more move out like this or this notice how I can move that curve just like this and I could also come in here and I could add some additional curved pieces in here like this and you could also come in here and rotate this curve if you wanted to and move it around a little bit so that your tree is a little bit more three-dimensional in here now one thing I will say that I would really like to see in this particular add-on and I'm not really seeing at the moment is I would really like to see the ability to actually have like tree presets right so picking a preset that actually makes this tree act like a certain tree I think would be really valuable right now I think you're doing a lot of manually figuring out what settings might look like in order to create different trees all right so let's say in our first tree that we wanted to add some leaves in here and note that you can use the use the remove branches lower than and shorter than in order to get rid of like little um little trailing branches like this one so we could move the remove branches that are shorter than right here in order to get rid of that but let's say we want to add leaves to this but what we could do is this actually has a number of different leaves and materials built in so if I click on the button for import leaves what this is going to do is it's going to bring in the library of leaves that come along with this tool they're already textured and ready to go L well then if I click on this right here and I scroll down you can add leaves by clicking by setting the add leaves to one and then you can reference that leaf collection and notice how there's a number of different leaves that are available in here we're just going to go with the green leaves for right now but what this is going to do is this is going to place leaves on your tree and you've got a number of different things that you can adjust so you can adjust things like the count of the leaves that are in here as well as the size so if you want to bring these up or down you can do that using these options you can also randomize the size and you can also adjust like how big the leaves are at the branch tips separate from the stems and other things like that so this gives you the ability to actually come in here and add leaves as well as there's also an option here to import materials alright so in addition you can also toggle this create UVS over here and you can pick one of the materials right so when you click on import material that's going to bring those materials in but then you can select them right so it comes with a couple different bark materials in this case we're going to use the Gray Bark right here when I click on that notice what that's going to do is that's going to apply that bark material to the tree now there are some things with the UVS that I haven't really figured out yet I mean I think this looks fine um but you may have to do some manual stuff there is a more detailed video over on bad normals YouTube channel um where you can see how he does some of that which I'll link to in the notes down below note that this does also give you the ability to set up displacement and so when you want to render this out you want to make sure you go into your material properties and you want to make sure that you've set up your surfaces to do displacement and bump not just displacement all right so then what we can do is we can jump over into our Shader editor and we can adjust this in order to affect the displacement and so what we want to do is we want to select our material and then we can go down into the displacement sliders and we can adjust the mid-level and the scale in order to set how much displacement is going on so um if you do want the displacement of the bark on your trees you can can set this up and notice how this is going to add some shadows and it's just going to look a little bit better than if you didn't have the displacement placed on here I don't think I'm really utilizing this to its full potential yet there are some things that you can do with the UVS in order to make this sit a little bit better but this initial setup is pretty good and if I kind of move back a little bit I think that the trunks look pretty good you will get better results if you do like a photo scan tree library or an asset browser just because those are pre-built but those don't really give you the ability to generate your own trees there is also an option at the bottom of the page where you can actually add wind to your tree and basically what your wind is going to do is it's going to make if you click play and my frame rate is going to be really low but you can kind of see it you can see how these branches are going to move around as if the wind was blowing so you can use this to actually simulate wind in your system as well now I will say again I think this is mostly a brand or I think this is mostly a leaf movement rather than a branch movement um so I don't see a whole lot of movement in the trees themselves this is more the branches and the leaves moving around but it still does give you the ability to generate those but the one feature that I haven't talked about yet which I think is probably like the best teacher that's contained inside of this tool is the growth function so what the growth function does is it's going to give you the ability to actually simulate the tree growing so we've got this tree right here right so if I go up to my growth and I toggle that on what this is going to do is this is going to give me the ability to take this slider right here and actually set up my growth like this so This actually gives you the ability to animate a tree growing in 3D so let's say that I was to keyframe this right so I'm going to add a keyframe right here and then let's say maybe like 40 frames in I want this to be fully grown so what I can do is I can keyframe this to 40 right here well then if I come in here I click on the play button notice what that animation is going to do is it's going to come in here and it's actually going to animate your tree growing inside a blender so you could actually use this to render out and animate trees growing in 3D like this and you can actually if you go to bad normals Channel if you go to bad normals Channel you can actually see a video they created with these growth functions in here and he's done some really crazy stuff with this particular add-on but you can see how he's used those animate growth functions in order to create some really cool animations so if you're trying to do anything like procedural tree generation and Branch growth and other things like that this could be a really great tool for you but it's really going to depend on what you want to do all right so my thoughts on this add-on right now first of all I think it's very promising I've been waiting for somebody to do kind of a reboot like the sapling tree generator I think this could turn into that a little bit I like what you can do with the different shapes and the curves what I would like to see is I'd like to see a little bit more of a preset system so if you remember with sapling true generator which is built into blender I can do a shift a right and I can add a tree and when I add a tree what it's going to do is it's going to give you the option to add different presets right so I've got like the fur um I've got like the weeping willow all those different trees are in here let's get something a little bit smaller maybe the Small Pine there we go um so this gives me a number of different presets for different tree types and I'd really like to see that in this add-on now where this is really powerful though is with sapling tree generator now that I've clicked off of that menu I'm kind of stuck right in the sense that it's already generated with this tool I have the ability to come in here and I have I can adjust like where the geometry is I can adjust the detail I can adjust like the gravity and other things like that just by dragging these sliders because it's geometry nodes based there's a lot of power in that because I really don't like having to redo trees or mess with the hole trying to get the menu popping back up other things like that so I think from that standpoint this could be a really cool tool the growth animation tool is really great and I really like that one um I would just like to see it tuned a little bit more so that I can actually create like different kinds of trees where these are are I mean they're good you can use them to generate whatever kind of tree that you want but they're a little bit more artistic in my mind so I am super excited to see where this goes I think this has a lot of Promise um and I think that it's already a great tool but I think there's some stuff I'd like to see at it so I'd love to hear from you in the comments down below what do you think as always thank you so much for taking the time to watch this and I'll catch you in the next video thanks guys

Channel: The CG Essentials

Views: 17,272

Keywords: blender, blender 2.82, blender 2.8, blender modifier tutorials, blender tool tutorial, the blender essentials, the cg essentials, thecgessentials.com, justin geis, justin geis blender, blender 2.9, blender 2.91, blender anytree, any tree blender, blender any tree add-on, blender anytree tutorial

Id: s6fGWdG4TIU

Length: 13min 29sec (809 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 16 2023