Clusters Decoration

The Clusters Decoration bends parts from a library, such as branch chunks, leaf bundles or fronds, to follow the branches of the Grows it is assigned to. Use it when your parts are static meshes that should follow the curve of a branch. Wire the parts into its first input; in the shipped Simple_Tree.hip example they come from an Atlas Wizard. For rigged parts, the Assembly Decoration is the way to add foliage.

Bending every part to its own branch would make each one unique geometry. With Output Mode on Clustered Instances (the default), the decoration groups similar branches and fits one shared part to each group, so the result stays instanced. Instances sets how many groups there are. Flatten (Unpacked) bends each part on its own branch.

Forward Axis tells the decoration which way the incoming parts were built, so set it when a library arrives facing the wrong way; Up Axis does nothing yet (see Clusters Decoration). It also has a trait list (Add Trait) and a chart (Launch (Enter)) for choosing between parts; see Traits, which describes the Assembly Decoration's version.

Foliage & Instancing compares the two approaches.