TreeDruid
The Making of  Tree parts
İMeski ( Robert Cox ), 2003

This tutorial may not be distributed in part or in whole in any media without the written consent of the author.  It is for your private use only.  The TreeDruid objs are distributed under a special licensing agreement with Zenstar and they may NOT be distributed in any media.  The TreeDruid objs are for your personal use only. 

TreeDruid is a Trademark of Zenstar
Zbrush is a Trademark of Pixologic
Bryce is a Trademark of Corel

 

A Look Back

    I am still learning and using TreeDruid 1.1 the software I bought as a Ray Dream Studio extension.  I have seen some software that may make better trees but none in the price range of TreeDruid.  For about $100, you can have TreeDruid Standalone.   Now, I am not on a stump for TreeDruid but I do appreciate good software.   Sure... it has its limitations but that is the fun of it all... getting around the limitations.

    TreeDruid has, it seems, about a million adjustable parameters.   During the run of this part of the tutorial, I will attempt to explain the use of some of its most useful controls that mean the difference between a hohum tree and a great one.  After all this time, I still learn something new about this program.  I seem to settle into a pattern of use and don't break out of it unless I am trying something new.  Well, I broke the pattern with the making of this tree. :o)

    If you don't have TreeDruid and want to continue the tutorial and you have downloaded the resources zip file, the meshes for the two tree parts are included in the zip.  There is a link at the bottom of this page to go to the Bryce portion of this tutorial.  But before you go, take a look at the inner workings of TreeDruid.

 

Creating the Tree Parts

1.  Open TreeDruid and choose Sycamore Maple from the presets that came with your program.  Click on the little tree on your lower left (1) to open the dialog shown above.

2.  Unlock the controls by clicking on the little lock shown by 3.   We are going to make the left side part of our tree by making a small branch.   Set the Tree Height, Width, Trunk Height, Trunk Width, and make sure that the Narrowest branch is set at .1""  Check the rest of your settings on this dialog and see that they are set as shown above.

3.  This dialog can get us in trouble but means the difference between branches and limbs looking like they are made of paper or wood.

    a.  Number of sides in a branch - Setting these parameters to 6 & 8 makes the branches look round.  The default numbers are smaller than this.   But, set these too high and our facet count will go sky high.  So be easy with these settings.  I don't know if it is true of newer versions but if the settings on the Mesh tab are set too high, TreeDruid will complain about the tree being too complex and will set the complexity level to 1... and you will have to start over. :oP  I suspect that TD allocates a pool of memory when it starts and doesn't go outside that memory for additional memory if it needs it.  So, be easy with these settings.

    b.  Segmentation range (at 100% fidelity).  This setting sets the amount that the mesh can be segmented when a branch or limb is bent.  If this is set too low, instead of bending it kinks.  For this exercise, these settings ( 11% and 33%) are just fine.

    c.  Trunk Quality - You can switch the preview to wireframe and watch the trunk change its polycount as you are adjust this control.  Unless you plan to morph this tree later in ZBrush or some other program, keep these sliders low but above 0. 

4.  Picture a limb that is somewhat horizontal/diagonal branching from the forks of our base.  The sun will pull up the branches and its limbs.  Well, we can't use sun here because it pulls from the top of the tree.  We can, however, use the wind to blow our tree to the side.  When we set this tree on our base, we will place the inside of the bow facing upward.  Make sure that Leaf is a 0 or it will make it look like the wind is blowing our leaves upward.

5.  Leaves

    a.  Coverage - The mistake that so many make is to put too many leaves on a tree.  I like seeing limbs and branches in my  trees so I keep the first two settings pretty low.  Amount Covered - 25% and Density 32% .   If this wasn't a DTE textured tree, I would set the Density setting higher but probably not much higher than 40% to 50%.

    b.  Leaf Size -  Because this is to be a DTE leafed tree, I am using very large leaves.  Check the rest of your settings to see that they are the same as shown above.

6.  We don't want a flair at the bottom of the trunk, so set the Trunk Base Extension to 0%.  This piece will have to fit into one of our tines on the fork of our base.

7.  The Main Stem - This is another dialog that can get us into a real big tree file.  This controls the number of branches and limbs on the tree.

    a.  Bough Deflection - This controls the bow up/down look of the top limbs of the tree.  It will have a little effect on the very bottom ones but not much.

    b.  End Bough Deflection - Controls the bow up/down look of the bottom most limbs of the tree.

    c.  Boughs around stem.  -  Quickly gets you into very large trees.  Setting this to 2 doubles the number of limbs.

    d.  Stem Tilt - Bends the tree but doesn't affect the trunk.

    e.  Stem Twist -  Changes the placement of limbs around the tree and their relative positions to each other.  Set this to 0 and then gradually increase to see how the resulting limbs are positioned on the main stem and to each other.   I use this setting to change the looks of a copy.  When you make the second tree part, you will need to change this setting.

    f.  Bough Density - This also will control the number of branches that will be created on the main stem.  Reduce this setting and watch the number of limbs decrease.  Use this dial in conjunction with Boughs Around Stem to create different species of trees.

    g.  Density Acceleration - Another control that can get you into a big tree quickly.  This controls the rate that new limbs are created from bottom to top of the main stem.

    h.  Minimum Length.  This controls whether or not the smaller limbs are created.  Run this number high and watch the number of limbs be reduced.   The smaller this number, the more detail you get.  Careful though, the size problem.

Set your settings as in the figure above.  You will have plenty of time to experiment later :o)

Boughs - This dialog behaves much the same as the Main Stem dialog only it controls the branching of the limbs.  Conceptually rotate a bough in your mind and you have a Main Stem.  All of the controls have identical effects so I am not going to go into it again. :o)  Set your settings as shown above.

 

Create Another One

Save the mesh above as wavefront and as a tdd. Change the following settings after you have saved the first part of the tree.

General

Tree Height - 60 ft.
Tree Width - 33 ft.

Leaves

Amount Covered - 38%

Main Stem

Stem Twist - 73
Bough Density 83%
Density Accelleration - 8%

Save this mesh out as wavefront and as a tdd.  Name it as you wish just different.  This tree will be the main part of the tree.  We will duplicate the mesh in Bryce and use it for the third stump on the tree base.

On to Bryce