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/

Rudolf Herczog
Digital Artist
www.rochr.com

Wooooo! Definitely downloading this one!

RosemaryR
---------------------------
"This...this is magnificent!"
"Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts.
Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

Thanks.More than interested.:)

Sweet!  Downloaded and will give it a play later.

Hugz from Phoenix, USA

Victoria

Remember, sometimes the dragon wins. Correction: MOST times.

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.

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader

All the Woes of a World by Jonathan Icknield aka The Bryster

And in my final hours - I would cling rather to the tattooed hand of kindness - than the unblemished hand of hate...

*"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. 

Rudolf Herczog
Digital Artist
www.rochr.com

more for brain matter....

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Do atleast one thing a day that scares the hell outta ya!!

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!!

___
Ockham's razor- It's that simple

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!

RosemaryR
---------------------------
"This...this is magnificent!"
"Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts.
Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

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!

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

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

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

Alright, screw overnight rendering. Here's the non-hdri version of the ivy covered Trefoil.

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

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

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

Do atleast one thing a day that scares the hell outta ya!!

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:

Rudolf Herczog
Digital Artist
www.rochr.com

**...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)

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

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?

;-)

I dare you, while there is still time, to have a magnificent obsession. --William Danforth

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? :)

Rudolf Herczog
Digital Artist
www.rochr.com

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.

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

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

**The (not quite finished) HDRI version of the render.**

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.

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

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.

You have to enable the transparency in the Mat Lab. Kinda like fixing DAZ figures' eyes.

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

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

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. 

Rudolf Herczog
Digital Artist
www.rochr.com

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.....

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

Okay, I crteated a strangely shaped Bryce object to experiment with some different Ivy settings, this is the first result.

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.

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

Here are the settings I had used, and/or check out the screenshot.

Growing
0.05
0.5
0.2
1
0.1
0.95
0.424
0.243

Birth
0.15
1.5
0.7

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

Very kewl!

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader

All the Woes of a World by Jonathan Icknield aka The Bryster

And in my final hours - I would cling rather to the tattooed hand of kindness - than the unblemished hand of hate...

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)

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

Okay, this is more what I myself was shooting for. It's getting close to the sweet spot for me; pretty good density and coverage but not too much of either. Ivy mesh at 22Mb.

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

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

Ivy Envy on Apple Isle... After a marathon effort I have it working on my Core Duo. It's far from ready for primetime but here's my first attempt. Apple Logo made in Bryce then exported, imported into Ivy still running in xCode and covered the top in Ivy. Still many warnings and some strange bugs to kill, but after killing 100's it's nice to have something working:-) Warning: I don't know C++, never seen the QT framework or GLee before. So this project may never reach a stable, sharable application. But it's very fast:-) Cheers Kaveman

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

This is one cool program!

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

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

*"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.

Rudolf Herczog
Digital Artist
www.rochr.com

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.

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

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?

I dare you, while there is still time, to have a magnificent obsession. --William Danforth

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)

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

slaps AS with a very large, smelly wet trout
These PC people......always looking for ways to trounce the Think Different™ crowd.

;-)

So Dan......that sounds like running Ivy Generator on my PPC isn't going to happen? :-/
(me can't afford an intel mac right now - sigh)

I dare you, while there is still time, to have a magnificent obsession. --William Danforth

Hey, I'm a programmer.. you ought to hear me talk some day ;-)

Anyway, let the computer do the work, is my motto.

Just to give a little more detail... When I said squishing bugs, I must make it clear that these where problems relating to expected files and frameworks not being in place. And Apples compiler being more pedantic about typecasting. All the open source code worked very well and as expected. Fantastic work by all those guys! They are the true heros. I'm just standing on the shoulders of giants. I've been compiling everything as Universal so all going well this should run on both Intel and the older PPC G4/5s. More news to follow... again I find my render Mac being used for programming:-(

Hrm, why the :-( ?  Programming is great! Rain or shine, you'll find me programming in one virtual desktop and Bryce in another virtual desktop. :-)

Yes, I've noticed Bryce render doesn't suckup all the RAM and CPU cycles. Ivy question: When you press birth does it display a textured vine and leaves on screen? I've got it displaying the vine but it's not textured until I use Bryce.

On my laptop the leaves show up green, but it's too far for me to see if there's any texture. In my desktop, the leaves come in white, not textured. I have to go to Bryce to get them textured.

Attached Link: Robert's C4D Ivy Mac Port Post (scroll down link to read)

kaveman (& other Mac users), it appears Robert (kuroyume0161) has sent off his Mac port version to Thomas.  From his post in the C4D forum here:

*"We have a Mac port... :)

I'm going to pass this to Thomas.  It would be excellent if someone on a PPC Mac could volunteer to verify that it runs there as well.  Also, since I have the Qt frameworks, it will be necessary to verify that this is indeed a completely static app (Qt built into the app rather than relying upon its frameworks which probably don't exist on others' systems).

Due to limitations with Qt4 and Xcode (gcc 4.0), this will only run on 10.3.9 and later.

Look forward to getting this out there tomorrow."*

kave - perhaps you could hook up with them and share your progress & findings too?
(just a thought)

Many thanks from me for all you've done so far (and to Robert as well). ;-)

I dare you, while there is still time, to have a magnificent obsession. --William Danforth

I need an ivy for dummys manual. Seems I'm not intuitive when it comes to which way I should slide the sliders. I know to hover over them to be told what they do, but I don't know if sliding to the left makes more/less, larger/smaller, taller/shorter etc etc. Its gonna take me a long time to figure this stuff out. But man do I love this program, can't wait till I understand enough to get a result that knocks me on my butt.

Here's a question:  I bring up a figure in D|S, export the .obj file so I can bring it into ivy maker, but also bring the same figure into Bryce; what export setting do I use so that when the .obj (the ivy file) is imported into Bryce, it's the same scale as the D|S import.?

Am I making sense?  Appologies if I'm not, had a rather rough St. Paddy's Day...

I've been sending some Poser girls over to the Ivy Generator so that I can redo some of my Dryad projects from years ago. Playing with the sliders help, but once I bring them back into Bryce, I have to resize the ivy.  It's a lot easier to resize an arch or wall than it is a person :-(

Trial and error!

If you change the branching probability all the way to the right, the vine does't branch much.. great for having creeping ivy on a floor.

I haven't played with all the settings, but here's another little thing I discovered: you can make a setting, then have the ivy grow. Then you can stop the growing, alter settings again, and continue growing.

So, changing branching probability to 1, click grow, it'll grow with one vine. Then after a bit I stop it, change the branching probability to .955 and it starts to branch. Changing the other settings and it starts looking very interesting.

VERY cool observation D_a_m, thanks!

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

**I need an ivy for dummys manual. Seems I'm not intuitive when it comes to which way I should slide the sliders.

**-Same here, lol. The effect of using the sliders wll most likely still be a random thing since it looks as if each "growth" is somewhat random in itself, especially if you re-position the Growth source point.

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

**Here's a question:  I bring up a figure in D|S, export the .obj file so I can bring it into ivy maker, but also bring the same figure into Bryce; what export setting do I use so that when the .obj (the ivy file) is imported into Bryce, it's the same scale as the D|S import.?

**-Yeah...unless someone can pull a trick out of their hat, I'm not seeing anyway to get a perfect "sync" with the Ivy and the original obj. I think the only way is to "eyeball" it. (best guess)

**Anyone else - thoughts?
**
*I've e-mailed the Ivy author, giving as a suggestion that we could be able to export the Ivy obj and the original obj together. Having to re-smooth a figure and re-texture it would be simpler (sometimes) than trying to re-sync the figure and the Ivy, lol.

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

I just started with the Mac version - works great except for some display problems (MacPro). Don't know how well this works but I was able to get both objects into Bryce scaled correctly by: Load Bryce and go to D|S Import the .obj to D|S Export using the Poser scaling option (Bryce scaling didn't work) Keep D|S open (or save as D|S file) and load Ivy Generator and load the D|S export. Export the Ivy Generator .OBJ Import into D|S with the Poser scaling Return to Bryce. So far the objects are really close. Image shows my first attempt.

AS slaps forehead
Of course.

Thank you Dan!!

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

Excellent suggestion to use D|S  (now i can use it for something) :-p

thanks for the link, this is totally awesome. This has just got to be next months challenge!!!

The same thing about stopping a growth to alter the settings applies to birth as well. You can, for instance, be doing a growth, then stop it, click birth and see how things are. Change "ivy leaf size" to 2, biggest size, and click birth again to see how that would look. Changing "leaf probability" to .959 (some branches will have leaves near the center, less as it goes outward) and click birth again to test that. Then growth to resume growing. It's pretty nice.

If you get a white bunch of leaves in Ivy Generator, it might be b/c the program isn't finding it's own leaf png files in it's path. At least when I start the program from it's bin directory, it shows textured leaves. But when I make a shortcut so I can jump back and forth to my Bryce projects, it looses the path to it's own leaves.

Am I the only person seeing that there is a Macintosh version?

Maybe....now there is. (?)

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

There was not a few days ago.

Right, meaning maybe the Mac users from Renderosity sent Luft what they had, and now that is being made available there. My best guess.

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

I know Robert in the C4D forum did.  Maybe kaveman did too?
I'm just thrilled they both made the attempt & went to all the trouble.
At least there's now a Mac flavor.
Me hat's off to both of them. ;)

I dare you, while there is still time, to have a magnificent obsession. --William Danforth

And, fast, too!

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

Been experimenting with this awesome program over the weekend (thanks to Ang25) and I was thinking that maybe Bryce’s new owners can put Luft’s program and whatever he can come up with to good use and they can all make money on the deal, Maybe Bryce 7? As perhaps a follow-up to Vue’s instant vegetation or some facsimile thereof. 

Been experimenting with inverting the vines, making them negative and Boleening them to a positive Bryce 5 terrain to create rivers and streams…no luck yet and handing it out there for further experimentation, perhaps as height maps? Maybe even as tree roots but would take some manipulation.

 

Rudy, nice catch! Tom Luft, great gift, thank you! If he’s not here, maybe he should be directed to this site (Luft I mean) and see our enthusiasm with this new tool.

Yes, I contacted Robert and he's got the smaller of the 2 working Mac versions, so he's tidying up a few pesky issues and forwarding it to Luft for distribution. If it's not in the current download then email Robert, I'm sure he could do with some more testers:-) Cheers Kaveman

This is probably a total newbie question but...

I've created something impressive (well I think so) in Bryce, how do I end up getting an obj file from that, can I get an obj file from that?  Is there any way to port it in to D|S?

There's probably some other way I'm not aware of. If it's a terrain, go to File -> Export and save it in the .obj file type. If it's B6 or greater you're using, you can export boolean'd objects. I think there's a pattern to follow (or at least this is what I always do) go ahead and click the "C" button in that object group. Bryce will take some time to "combine" the two boolean'd objects. Then go to File -> Export and save that new object in .obj.

If there are mats involved, it may take Bryce a bit of time exporting them all too. For the Ivy Generator (IG), I just export with a grey mat which makes exporting quick.

Maybe there's some other way to export... I haven't been experimenting with this feature too closely. I've made some arches and pillars and exporting to IG this way.

In B6, if it's not a boolean already, select what you want to use totally ungrouped, hit the little "A" gadget next to the objects, at set them to Positive, OK it and now group them. You should now have a "C" gadget, now click that. When it's done select the Export Object... item from the File menu. In the File Selector, name it and select .OBJ from the popup and Save. If ti's only one object you'll need to create a dummy object (like a Bryce Cube), offset from the target, then do the above. HTH; Dan

Thanks Dan.  I've always wondered why I couldn't always export and that's sorted it.

Now my problem.. how to make the ivy bigger? I've been playing with the settings and haven't quite gotten it there. Here's a test render of a sundial... 

D@M wants to cover my loco with ivy.......don't tell him anything!

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader

All the Woes of a World by Jonathan Icknield aka The Bryster

And in my final hours - I would cling rather to the tattooed hand of kindness - than the unblemished hand of hate...

You can always make more than one growth of ivy on your mesh, exporting each out seperately, and then combining them back together in Bryce.

Otherwise, you have to practice with those Ivy slider settings

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

Traitor!

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader

All the Woes of a World by Jonathan Icknield aka The Bryster

And in my final hours - I would cling rather to the tattooed hand of kindness - than the unblemished hand of hate...

You can run the Ivy program "standalone", meaning, you don't have to import an obj model.  Simply double click and then click grow.  Click grow to stop (growing) and then click "birth".

This makes it a little easier to see your slider changes.  Double click again to start a new "ivy".  Export when you see something you like.

A little more information.  The material file points to three .png images for young and adult leaves and the branch textures.  You can edit the associated material file to use different images (textures).

When you import the obj into Bryce, you can ungroup it (make this easier by assigning a family color so you can select and group the obj easier.)  With it ungrouped, check the three textures to see if you need to set the blend transparency and maybe change diffuse or ambiance settings.

I can't wait to try the stand alone. This is good to know. Thanks

I should clarify my above post.  When I said click "grow" to stop, that's only if you want to stop before the grow function finishes,  It will stop on it's own, but you may prefer to stop before all the branches finish (growing.)

First of all, many thanks to Rudy, this tool really rocks! 

But there are more possibilities than only ivy, here you see my latest try to create a clematis. I replaced in both cases the young leaves by a blossom tex. In the picture on the left I choose a very small leave size and disabled anti aliasing for the ivy; in the picture on the right the leave size is on maximum and rendered with AA.

Like that first one (on the left)

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

generators are cool.
anyone know of any others?
like a building or skyscraper generator...

funny idea, a natural-growing skyscraper. I've never heard about such a thing but just imagine, one klick and you could watch your building growing ... quite fascinating!

Believe it or not, a freeware utlity called "CityGen"

*CityGen is a procedural 3D model generator application aimed for generating random urban models.

http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tommer/citygen/

*Not as user freindly as Ivy generator

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

Thanks AgentSmith, I have already seen that app, I coulnt figure it out..confused:

as for the Ivy Generator, i havnet had time to play with it much yet, but Its really impressive !
I doubt he realises it yet, but Thomas Luft (the creator) could make some money out of this, it is quite remarkable app, and could be improved furher or incorporated into a big app like bryce, Vue etc. I would imagine they'd be VERY interested, as the response from just  the renderosity community is already good !

**and could be improved furher or incorporated into a big app like bryce, Vue etc

**-No, actually JUST Bryce, lol.   :oD

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

BTW - .OBJ objects that are smaller then 10mm don't load at all for me. Both Mac and PC.

I've had various .obj files that don't load on it, normally it errors to say that it can't cope with the material file (normally exported from Bryce) and then doesn't import the object.

Happens to me a lot, I just ignore it. The object tends to get imported... have to zoom out, pan around until you find it. Sometimes it's hovering above the camera and must zoom out a lot. Pan around, even do a 360 in all directions... above the ground level.

Yup, zooming out is important, the camera is usually smack dab in the middle of the mesh.

You might also want to try and have no mats on the mesh you bring out of Bryce. Just apply a flat color to it. Might help.

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

So that's what it is.  It's floating in the air.

Any idea how to land it?

@Uncle_Riotous You have to make sure the model is already grounded in whatever program it is created in, before importing into IvyGen. Apparently IG reads the world positioning info, even if you didn't think it was included.

RosemaryR
---------------------------
"This...this is magnificent!"
"Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts.
Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

Should have been clearer, the camera looks as if it is flush up against the mesh...maybe inside of it, no way to tell, but the camera is usually at ground level.

But, Rosemaryr is correct also. If the mesh is off the ground in the first place, it will probably be off the ground in Ivy Generator. Not really a problem, it's just usually easier to know where you're grounded. (horribly bad pun) 

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

HEY, Thomas posted some of the renders users have been making with his Ivy Generator at his website (be sure to scroll down);

http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/%7Eluft/ivy_generator/

...and there is a strangely familiar Bryce one in there, lol.....;o)

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

Pretty cool stuff. I haven't had the time to continue with my sundial... it got too close to the challenge date to play around with other things. But after the challenge..... evil laugh :-)

There is now a version 1.3 available for both PC and Mac....has an automatic 'zoom to object' so you no longer have to do a zoom-out to find your imported thingie-bob-whatsis....

RosemaryR
---------------------------
"This...this is magnificent!"
"Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts.
Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

I sent him an email thanx
its been a very long time since something made me saw "wow" when I saw it.

BT

Ah, awesome! That zommed out camera position helps a bunch.
I'm not having to flip normals now to make the Ivy grow correctly....

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

Woohoo mac version of Ivy generator..I'm so happy:-D <--does the lil dance from happy feet movie:-P

Do atleast one thing a day that scares the hell outta ya!!

Hahahahaha, looks like a lil money app to me, can use your own leaves like in bryce's tree editor:-)

Do atleast one thing a day that scares the hell outta ya!!

Oo! So money does grow on trees!

A new test I did on a few Boulders, which you can buy my boulder set on Daz LMAO OMG whatta shameful plug, anyways:-P

Do atleast one thing a day that scares the hell outta ya!!

Okay, I appreciate I'm a little late to the Ivy Generator party, but how do I export an object from Bryce to use it in IG? I can see that it needs to be an .obj file, but I'm not able to export anything other than a terrain or lattice into this format from Bryce. I'm attempting to export a group of stones (which I thought would be ok as they are meshes like the terrains and lattices), but no luck. What's the trick with this?? I'm using Bryce 5.5....or is the answer just to get off my butt and upgrade to 6.1 ;-)

Thanx in advance!

*or is the answer just to get off my butt and upgrade to 6.1 ;-) *
That would do it! ;-)

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader

All the Woes of a World by Jonathan Icknield aka The Bryster

And in my final hours - I would cling rather to the tattooed hand of kindness - than the unblemished hand of hate...

**@ SunsetHunter:**  You can try to export by clicking the "E" to smooth the rock. That will bring up the "edit mesh" dialog for smoothing. Here, press the two keys [CTRL] + D and an export dialog will appear. Choose the file type .OBJ and save!

Here's how it looks with Bryce 5.

Just like Death_at_Midnight says. The rock export works with ver.5.1 so it should work with 5.5.

Hey, thanx for all that feedback - D@M: I'll try that out tonight, but that looks to be exactly what I was looking for! thankyou!  I checked through the help file in Bryce but it didn't mention anything about this functionality (so much of Bryce seems to be hidden in this way - which makes the program both frustrating and fascinating!). BTW: congrats on winning the Bryce Glass challenge!!

Bryster: yes, I think you're right - could be time to upgrade! :-)

Success!! Thanx for that advice as that worked a treat! :-)

BTW: Once the notification came out from DAZ today re. the boxed version of Bryce 6.1 being FINALLY available, I signed up immediately, so V6.1 here I come!

SunsetHunter: Don't forget, you have to donate 10% of the price of B6.1 to the Comfy Chair Restoration Fund......

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader

All the Woes of a World by Jonathan Icknield aka The Bryster

And in my final hours - I would cling rather to the tattooed hand of kindness - than the unblemished hand of hate...

Downloaded and had a little play.
Very good, but worried that all future images will now have just a little bit of ivy in them :rolleyes:

PORTAL

Ok, I'm totally new to all this modelling stuff - I'm so sorry for looking like a complete moron!

I had a play with the generator and got some nice looking ivy, but when I imported it into 3d Studio Max, the materials weren't there and the articulation of the leaves was gone and I just had lots of weird polygons where the leaves were.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Are there specific import settings you need to use?

Thanks - and thanks heaps to the person who made the program: you're a true inspiration to a novice like me!

Also, the object that I import into the generator doesn't seem to show up...how can I fix that?

Okay. First, IG will --only-- export the finished ivy objects. You will have to manually re-import whichever model you had your ivy 'grow on', along with your ivy, into 3DMax. Second, you will have to manually point 3DMax to where the materials images are stored (they are usually inside the Ivy Gen 'Textures' sub-folder). Do this by, first un-grouping the three main objects of the ivy---trunk, old leaves, and new leaves. Select each in turn and find the required material, and apply. Third, for the two leaves groups, you will also have to make sure that the transparency settings are activated. The materials used have an alpha-mask picture associated with it to drive the transparency. Use that pic in whatever slot 3DMax uses for transparency. (Not having 3DSMax, I will leave that to another to specify...)

RosemaryR
---------------------------
"This...this is magnificent!"
"Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts.
Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

My first play.

Absolutely horrendous file sizes and literally days to open and render.

PORTAL

Thanks to the author for this free app! Totally amazing - I love watching the ivy grow :)                (or flowers in this case - I replaced the leaf)

I just discovered this thread, so here is my first try with IG - 

Rendered in Carrara, two spotlights (no hdri) so it only took about 1 min to render.

Here is the same scene, close up .....

Oooh! That is purty! I'm gonna' have to try that in Carrara too.

Thanks danamo - here is the flower pic I used in place of the original file "efeu1".

Cool! Mind if I snag this pic? It looks a lot like some of the Rhododendrons that are currently blooming in my garden. My digicamera is on the fritz, so I'm thinking of buying a new one. Bad time to lose it too; the garden is a symphony of color right now.

No problem :) 

I would love to see pics of your garden when you get your camera working :) 

Thanks Discoseven. I'll try to get some shots in the next couple of days when the forecast calls for sunshine.

Hrm, I have a terrain and some rocks. Placed into IG, the ivy either grows on the rocks and through the terrain, or when I click "flip normals" the ivy grows on the terrain and through the rocks. Anyone have similar experience? Workaround?

Would probably do the trick if you could turnthe two meshes into a single one before importing into IG. I would think Wings 3D could handle that?

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

Thanks heaps, Rosemaryr - unfortunately, despite your awesome help, I'm still retarded 

I tried ungrouping the imported ivy, but nothing happened and when I tried to assign the materials to it, it would only take one, thus making it look really silly.

Am I importing it with the wrong settings? Attached is the screen that comes up when importing.

Should I just get a trial version of Bryce and import everything there? Is it easier that way?

Also, Agent Smith - what lights did you use in your scene? It looks gorgeous!

Thanks heaps guys!

I used the HDRI called "Outside". it was out of the HDRI's that are included with B6.0, then included a little haze and fog from the Skylab to help define the vines from the background grass.

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

PrincessL: hmmmmm. Found a friend with an old version of Max (v4), and the same thing happened there...it came in as one group, and we couldn't find a way to 'ungroup' it. But then he said that the obj import for Max v.4 was a plug-in, not a native thing, so probably it wasn't up to snuff. But I did find that some of the other programs I use could hack it apart. I use UVMapper Pro, and could select by 'Material" to separate the parts... You may wish to download either the demo version of UVM Pro, or the free "Classic' version and give it a try. And, as you said, getting one of the free or trial versions of Bryce should do it too.

RosemaryR
---------------------------
"This...this is magnificent!"
"Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts.
Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

Thanks heaps Rosemaryr - I thought I was going crazy!