Growing tree looks something wrong

[Getojoe]

I'm working on an animation of trees growing on the Maxtree file, and the branches of trees are sticking out.

 

I looked for another tutorial, but it wasn't 2.0 version, so I couldn't figure it out.

What am I missing? And I'd appreciate it if you could tell me which modifier to use to control growth

 

Growing tree.zip

[Miroslav Kovac]

Hello Getojoe,  I have played around with your file and get desired result, below I will write what was changed to get smooth animation (left your original, right adjusted):

 

 

So the changes are as follows:

 

1.  Your braneches were sliding up and down along your main trunk, this was caused that path position distributor with density is counted within the range lenght of main trunk, for anim growth you cannot use this distributor, instead you need to use path position distributor (it was done by converting node with righ mouse button)

2. Flickering of your branches up and down was caused by wrong order of direction modifiers (they needs to go in order as they are in direction rollout node), also the strength in noise dir should be constant number, there fore I turned off the graph value

 

3. You forgot to plug autokey value for branches from public parameter length, only your main trunk was growing from 0 to 1357 cm, I have plugged to this public param your branches, optional within autokey you can affect for instance bending of the branches while they grow, in start growt they are more upright and then slightly open up more.

4. For branches I have also change order of direction modifiers as it was wrong and added vector dir instead of your hard bend to bend your branches. As for your noise dir for branches, you have strong values for strenght X=2 and Y=2 which was causing weird poly twistings in the start path of your branches, also turned off  vector dir orient which is used more for last twigs and leaves path to get them to correct upright position parallel to ground.

 

I have attached changed with original inside one file, so you can compare, I have only 3ds max 2023 so can save 3 ver. down to 2020, somebody needs to resave older versions.

 

Thanks, hope it helps, we learn every they and think will built great community here in the forum.

Growing treeMAX2020.zip

[Getojoe]

Hello Miroslav Kovac,

 

Thank you very much for your kind explanation and reply! I will study by comparing two nodes.

 

*I want to ask you one more question about your answer number 3.

Why does the public parameter length auto key in the developer's orange tree file work even if it is only in the tree trunk?

I attached the relevant file (converted to 2.0)OrangeTree_1_Converted 2.0.zip

 

Thank you again for your kind reply It will be very helpful to me!

[Miroslav Kovac]

Hello Getojoe, I have checked shortly your example orange tree, based on this some of my claims with my post seems to be not valid, I am still learning also. You are right that public parameter autokey is enough for main trunk and everything is affected by using Affect nodes to all other paths and settings. It is good example for learning and setup correct corelations between all dependent paths, thank you for this, I will study in detail, at the end everything are numbers, beziers, etc. and we need to be creative and effective mathematicians to achieve desired results 

 

So, the key to success is to perfectly understand Affect nodes and affect everything

[Getojoe]

I'll leave this thread for beginners like me.

Thank you for your answer