The Grove 3D – Blender 2.8 AddOn

Release 3 gets back to the core. Introducing new natural effects for greatly improved – and totally new – tree characters.

Tree branches have many senses and matching reactions to guide
themselves through space. As The Grove delves deeper and deeper into the
inner workings of growth, it becomes clear how much influence each of
these strategies has on a tree’s eventual shape. It comes as no surprise
that a tree’s main sense is that of light, or the lack thereof…
A branch has several strategies to get to the thing it craves most:
light. Apical Dominance is the strongest strategy a tree has. By
favoring current branches over sub branches, a tree will soon find the
light above its neighbors.

Until now, Favor Current was a uniform effect for every branch. From
now on, each branch individually regulates its own Favor Current based
on the amount of light it gets, or does not get. Now each single branch
of a tree competes for light with all other branches.

So how does this work in real trees? Some species are shade tolerant
and comfortably grow on a shaded forest floor. While others are shade
avoiders and they will die in the shade.
Take the Beech tree, a good example of a shade tolerator. In good light
conditions, a beech will grow quite high, with a fairly high Favor
Current. But it evolved to live in the shade of taller trees and it
knows that it may have to survive in shaded conditions for a long time.

Shaded branches will branch out with equal power to the main and sub
branches, to maximize its leaf surface area and to harvest as much light
as possible.

A shade avoider like a Pine can’t bear shade. Its best shot at
survival is to increase its Favor Current on shaded branches, to not
waste any energy on side branches.

Shade Avoidance adds a lot to the character of the tree. As the best lit branches perform better, trees will get a nice mix of heavy main branches and big clusters of canopy.