Ok, so the navigation suck, but it´s quite useful. 
Thought some of you may be interested. :)

http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/~luft/ivy_generator/

Wooooo! Definitely downloading this one!

Thanks.More than interested.:)

Sweet!  Downloaded and will give it a play later.

Impressive! Must get... got it now! :-)

This is a fun program. From the Readme file:

Usage:

Import your obj+mtl scene, double-click to place the ivy root,
press "grow", and enjoy watching the ivy growing! If you want
to see the full geometry, press "birth". Use the export
function to save your ivy geometry as obj+mtl for usage in your
3d world. Please keep your scenes simple, since the growing
process slows down in complex scenes heavily. In case your ivy
is growing inside your objects, use the "flip normals" button
to flip the surface normals of your objects. You can customize
your ivy using the provided settings - tool-tips will help you
to understand the settings.

Camera controls:

rotate - left mouse button
track - left mouse button + control
dolly - right mouse button
orbit - left mouse button + shift

Rochr: Thanks for the link! 

I sent Thomas Luft a thank-you too! We all should.

*"I sent Thomas Luft a thank-you too! We all should."

*I absolutely agree, and i´m still amazed he´s actually giving it away for free. 

more for brain matter....

Please someone port this over to the mac, I could really use that lil app hehe

OMG that looks gorgeous, I'm itching to get home. Oh wait thats not poison ivy. Ok I can't wait to get home and download this. It looks so cool.

Awesome little Program. Thanks Rudy!!

Thanks for the link. Looks interesting!

In addition to the given Read-Me instructions: First thing on opening: Zoom Out! (Right-click and drag downwards) For some reason, the default opening camera is in extreme zoom-in position. 2. Import any desired object for the ivy to grow onto. Must be .obj format. 3. Double-click to place base of ivy. 4. Adjust sliders if desired. 5. Click on the 'grow' button. You will see blue indicators showing where the ivy will grow to. 6. When it looks right, hit the 'birth' button. This actually creates the obj model of the ivy. 7. Export ivy. In Bryce: You will need to ungroup the three part model (one branch group, and two leaf groups) in order to set the transparency settings on the leaf material. Once I figured out the steps, it was quick, clean and easy. Imports without any problem. And, IMHO, makes a more realistic branch sturcture than anything I've seen. The branch alone (deleting the leaves groups) makes for a lovely root bundle, if you like. All in all, an excellent little program!

Yeah, good point about the zoom. It took me a bit to realize it was really zoomed.

Has anyone figured out some good settings? When I was experimenting with it some hours ago, it was just going up then coming right back down. An upsidedown U... all the time.

I just used default settings, and lol....let it wrap itself around Bryce's Trefoil go for a count of 400.....oh, it worked, very well. but the render time is going to take overnight, lol. 

And ditto, with my experience so far, I have found I  had to always do the following;

-Use the flip normals button. Otherwise the ivy ALWAYS grew inside the mesh (also).

-Use the Birth button after growing the ivy, otherwise when I went to export, it would just make a 0kb file and that's it, lol. (live & learn)

VERY cool little app!

DAZ needs to acquire this from Thomas Luft toot-sweet.

as I stomp off to cover every mesh I have in ivy

A.G..Get a mac port, this thing looks awesome, I want it badly :-D Could have used this a loooong time ago yunno?

Clay, you should do the right thing and get a PC. :biggrin: 

How the heck do you guys manage to wrap the stuff AROUND your meshes. My attempts only result in stuff growing here and there, and never along the mesh... :mad:

**...to wrap the stuff AROUND your meshes

**-I Had that same problem, until I started clicking that "Flip Normals" button before double-clicking on my mesh to grow. After that, it did the right thing and only grew along the outside of the mesh.  ;o)

Quote - A.G..Get a mac port, this thing looks awesome, I want it badly :-D

I'll second that request.  I'd be happy to pay for a Mac version.
This foliage hound would love to have this in her Mac toolbox!
Pretty pleeeease?

;-)

Quote - **...to wrap the stuff AROUND your meshes

**-I Had that same problem, until I started clicking that "Flip Normals" button before double-clicking on my mesh to grow. After that, it did the right thing and only grew along the outside of the mesh.  ;o)

Yep, tried that. Didn´t look anything close to yours though, just a few random branches.
Care to share some settings? :)

Clay, I'm not a Mac person, so I don't know what's going on in the Mac scene. However, any emulation software do you have?

I think we have to wait for it to grow... anyway I think that's my problem... I didn't wait. Clicked grow, watched it for a bit, then birth.. but too fast. Right now it just grew over a rock.... still going.. will it stop automatically?

Care to share some settings? :)
-Actually, I didn't change any settings, left them at default.  ;o?
So, I dunno. Maybe different meshes have different reactions?

**will it stop automatically?
**-About the time your ram starts smoking....yes. (otherwise, no I don't think so)
I let that Trefoil one go to 400, which made a 67Mb Ivy mesh. I don't know if I want to go much higher, lol.

Actually, when I can (I'm still rendering the HDRI version) I'll start screwing with the settings, hopefully get more coverage, with a little less density. Although, can't complain, this is a bad-a$$ little utility.

Thank you for the heads-up Rudi. This is a fun app.

Well, I need my main PC right now for other graphical stuff, so I gotta pause this 7 hour HDRI render, but I was itching to post it. At least it's about half way through the last pass.

HDRI makes it look so much better.
But, multiple light sources, even though not using soft shadows, makes it render so long, lol.

*Hey - One little suggestion; after you get your first ivy into Bryce, get the mats on the three meshes (branches, young leaf, adult leaf) just how you want them, and then save those as Bryce presets. Obvious suggestion, but a huge time saver when bringing in new Ivy.

*Also - I ended up using a tweaked Bryce DTE on the branches scaled way up (1000%), Anything else just showed up as a plain tan or brown color.

Yikes! I better stop mine then!!

Before long we all will be saying..."Hello.  My name is... And I'm an Ivy addict"

Hrm, for some reason I can't seem to get rid of the white border in the ivy's leaf .PNG files in Bryce.

-Put the beads across from Transparent & Transparency in Channel A. In the little Material Options drop down, make sure Blend Transparency is enabled.

Is it possible to replace the Ivy .PNGs with other leaf pictures? If so, this app would be perfect for making any vining plants, such as morning glories, Lllanas(shrouding a Mayan temple), Wisteria, or even Kudzu.

Quote - Is it possible to replace the Ivy .PNGs with other leaf pictures?

It works just fine. I´ve tried with a few different leaf-types. 

Thanks AS. Forgot all about that, actually. Will have to try that when I get back home. Thanks!

Most excellent! Thanks for the reply Rudy. :-)

Replace the leaves with tentacles.....

These settings had the Ivy crawl across the mesh pretty fast, and quite completely, yet somewhat irradically. Normally the Ivy crawls slow and doesn't spread all that fast, so it turns out very dense in a tighter area.

The Ivy itself is less dense, but covers more area. I'll need to play with the settings more as the Ivy is irradic in how it sometimes shoots away from the mesh a little too much.

But, the mesh was quite decent at only 2.8Mb!

After rendering here, I see I should have reduced the size of the leaves a little. Scale looks a little comical.

Growing
0.05
0.5
0.2
1
0.1
0.95
0.424
0.243

Birth
0.15
1.5
0.7

Very kewl!

Okay, MUCH better settings, imo.

Growing
**0.05
**0.5 (default)
0.2 (default)
1 (default)
0.1 (default)
0.95 (default)
0.333
0.103

Birth
0.15 (default)
1.0
0.7 (default)

Settings that I'm now at;

Growing
0.0251
0.333
0.243
0.494
0.1
0.807
0.342
0.247

Birth
0.099
0.6
0.502

It's like one of them chia things!  :-)

This is one cool program!

Holy $&%!
You mean you "ported" this thing over to a Mac?

*"Replace the leaves with tentacles....."

Yeah, perhaps that will work better. :)

I´ll try your settings and see how things turn out. Thanks man.
I think it also has something to do with the C4D-obj´s im putting into it. I´ll try some Bryce-models instead.

I've tried (so far) straight Bryce made models, and Bryce-made models that I ran through ZBrush just to get it to be a single solid mesh, so far so good.

Also tried a Elefont made mesh that I ran through Bryce to convert it to .obj, that worked well also.

I snagged and bagged this puppy - shall sinfully covet it - MWA HA HA HAAAAAARRRRRRRR.....

Quote - Holy $&%!
You mean you "ported" this thing over to a Mac?

Yeah Kaveman - enquiring minds wanna know?!  Robert over in the C4D forums is also attempting a try, but your is the first render I've seen.  How do non-techno wizards like myself attempt this & will it run on a dual G5 PPC running 10.4.7?

Cool Kaveman! Since it's being complied in xCode, it should be able to produce a Universal Binary (although that may be easier said then done). I've got the download and will try it under Parallels Desktop and Bootcamp when I get back to work next week. Oh and thanks to Rudy for the link and AS for the all the tips! Best; Dan

These Mac people.....everything they do with code sounds like one of Data's technical rants from Start Trek.  ;o)