Hi All!

I have a growing tree alembic mesh from SpeedTree that has a wind animation. I'm trying to figure out a way to stick points to the twigs as they appear in the growth animation to start growing apples from. Obviously with the changing topology from the growth and the deformation from the wind, a simple point scatter isn't an option because they jitter all over the mesh.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!
Chris

Just an idea, I'd try choosing a percentage of the leaves to turn into apples. Not sure if you can get a constant leaf id from Speedtree, otherwise I'd try to create one by comparing their position in a solver from frame to frame.

Thanks Tanto! That's a great idea and I'll experiment with going that route.

Still, I wonder if there's some solution to sticking points to growing and deforming topology as it appears?

I believe it is possible to export from Speedtree with a velocity attribute? Assuming growth is taken into account, you could transfer the velocity to your scattered points, then with a solver move them and possibly reproject them on the closest surface of your tree.

Cool that's another good idea!

The approach that I think works the best for now is to scatter them in the UV texture space that comes with the speed tree. The uv's come out animated and stuck to the geo grow animation. I should have thought of that before lol. It looks like it can be done in the scatter node in the generate option.

Thanks again!
Chris

is the growing done with a consistent geometry, I mean, do all branches exist at the beginning, keep their vertex order and topology the same and growing just by transforming points?

Hey sanostol!

The geo is constantly changing (growing). The growth animation starts from no points and by the end of the growth there's millions of points. I honestly don't understand how the UV's out of Speedtree are even sticking to the geo haha.

Chris