ptrain03

Hi Krapton, it looks like you specified absolute length for your U. So your map is wrapping all the way around and reaching the end of the mesh before your next tile. You could either not use an absolute width, or just adjust the width downwards until it aligns.

Hi wsk, It looks like you just need to start out with a "distributor" distributor instead of a "Path" distributor. You have to start with a "distributor" because your first path doesn't have any other paths to be distributed upon.

Not sure what's going on with the tree, but if you need to get the file open you could just make a new Max file and merge in all the objects except that tree. Then you could merge the problem tree into a separate file and see if it will open by itself. You might have to simplify the tree, but at least this way you will not loose your work. I have run across this several times with larger meshes, but sometimes it hangs on smaller ones as well.

wow! that's great news !

are you able to get good performance in unreal with full polygon trees using nanite?

very nice!

For parts of the tree that are decoupled from the growth of the trunk, I usually use an invisble path (usually with a path position modifier) that the leaf or fruit growth is affected by.

It looks like your palm trees are not flickering. Did you do anything differently with them? also, are your wind modifiers designated as "after mesh" modifiers? also this is just a guess, but could you have forgotten to put a render node on one of the machines? If that was the case you would get a jumped frame every time that machine rendered a tree. also, are you using a program to scatter the trees or are you just doing that without a plugin?

Those models are beautiful! I love how clean your work is.

That math node looks like it could be really useful for speeding up workflows. Really powerful updates!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

in order to only get some of the flowers to open, you could add a helper (path position) path to the base of each bud. then you could change the count rate so that not every bud will contain a helper path. Then link your blooming action based on the length of these helper paths. You can get even more variation by adding chaos to the leach of the helper paths.

In order to get fruits or flowers to animate after the plant has stopped growing, you could link the petal/ fruit animation to the growth of an invisible helper path. This Path would continue to lengthen after the rest of the paths have stopped.

It could be that the leaves are flipping rather than disappearing. You might check to see if all of your paths contain a "vector orientation direction modifier". If one of the paths does not, It could cause sudden flipping. For this tree it looks like all layers should have a vector orientation direction modifier in the "y" direction at 100 Percent. This sets the up and down direction for the path, so it is pretty important. Not adding this to each path can give you unexpected results. Random and noise modifiers can also cause flipping and mesh breakage. If you have any of these in your tree try turning them off and seeing if that fixes it. Those modifiers should be at the bottom of the modifier stack so that you don't get unexpected results when modifier commands compound. For the mesh disappearing when < parent, you could try setting a minimum diameter. I think it overrides the "<parent" option, but I could be wrong. Real branches never have a 0 diameter, so I always set this at something like 1/16". This option is toward the top of the mesh panel. Hope it helps!

You might try doing it without levels. It makes the paths a little easier to control. I just use a path for each branch level.