Vertical groundcovers

[Albert Rodríguez]

Is there any way to  change the normal of the groundcover's grown plane?

I just tried applying it to a vertical surface but, though it works, the leaves they are always growing in the Z-Vector direction.

 

[Miguel Tano Adanes]

I just tried to copy an existing groundcover and in the leaves tab I set the angle value to 90. It seems to work!

[Albert Rodríguez]

thanks Miguel, but it's not exactly the same effect, since leaves position is still calculated over the Z-Axis

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Try applying it to a 3d solid.  Let me know.

[Albert Rodríguez]

It works!

Is it possible to get the same result for mesh objects? : )

[Miguel Tano Adanes]

Yes, works better!

[Ugo Iglesias]

When I try on doing the kind of plants that "hang" for elevated planters, balconies with a touch... I generate a 3d solid which is an extrusion of the desired front view of the element as I decided it to "populate". Then, I explode the 3D object and delete all faces that should not show. 

I apply an "invisible material" to it and then proceed to attach the groundcover. It works wonders for some distances depending on the detail level. Also, if you wish to play around a bit, this method is very useful when you need shaped foliage, like the kind we desire to have aside any fence, edging a curb or even as filling over medium sized grass areas. It's a little tricky to set accurate scaling (for me, I reckon).

We tend to use pre-done plants which are sort of dioramas. They are good but usually the result must be "equalized" with the rendered image so they don't look "cartoonish" or faded. We copy a number of these entities to fill some areas. The groundcover is a very good tool.. trust me!. Take time to play with it and you'll never regret. One hint.. get yourself some crisp images to use as flowers and leaves. The better the source, the better final results.

[Miguel Tano Adanes]

Very interesting method. Could you please upload a couple of example images?

[Ugo Iglesias]

Ok, here are a few pics with more or less the process I explained. 

  This little model is what I use to setup my groundcover materials and I recommend everyone to create one in order to facilitate the custom materials creation process for two reasons: 1. the materials and groundcover SCALE may not be the same for every job (for me it changes all the time) 2. There's a lot of trial-error rendering until you get what's wanted. So, before proceeding to rendering anything in nxt, I make sure that the scale is as the models I'm used to deal with. If not, I use this test platform. 

  exc1. Here you see the desired shape drafted upon the planter's edge (keep in mind the UCS). If you look real close, you may see that the shape is not co-planar with the planter's wall. it's "shifted" a bit to avoid artifacts and produces a gap which also prevents undesired shadows or clipping.

  exc2. This is the extrusion. Notice that I make it HUGE!. The reason for this, is to facilitate undesired faces deletion. If you make it small, you waste a lot of time deleting small pieces.

  exc3. After EXPLODING the resulting 3D Solid, every single face turns into a REGION which works as surface for applying groundcover. Regions are cool, because they can be edited via boolean operations. I also create a top "cover" face using any method (i.e. 3Dface or region too).

  

[Ugo Iglesias]

exc4. This is the rendered model. After applying an "invisible" material to the region, assigning the desired groundcover and scaling adequately, you can see the result is very good and works wonders at certain distances (depending on the groundcover quality). I have left the "half donut" object I use for other purposes to illustrate the potential of the groundcover tool which in this case, is sort of a mulch for rocks. I always have water, walls, the half donut and the hanging plants in the model when creating new materials. I play with the scale a lot! specially because the water and the groundcovers depend on independently scaled images pretty much all the time. So, I find the desired scale WITHIN the testing model and then scale the project's model, matching both test and project to the wall thickness. 

  But this is just how I do it. I'm sure they are many other methods which work and could be simpler.

[akinlolu olugboji]

Ever tried this!

[Ros. Riha]

There are various problems related to it:

• Trees easily grow very huge in size
• It is difficult to set them up to stick to walls as in real life
• Your model has to be accurate, normals facing the right direction etc, otherwise it would grow into the building
• It creates materials with embedded textures

[Miguel Tano Adanes]

For that, try IvyGeneretor. George Ioannidis knows pretty well how to use it.