Cluster Decoration

Attach and deform flat cluster assets along the skeleton, bending them to follow a branch. The right tool for static meshes that should follow a curve.

The Cluster Decoration attaches and deforms cluster assets (branch chunks, leaf bundles, fronds) along the skeleton, bending them to match its curves. It is built to stay fast on dense crowns and undergrowth.

It suits the case where the input library is flat static meshes and the goal is to make them follow a skeleton's curves. You use it to say: add this cluster set here, at this density and variation.

For most current foliage workflows the Assembly Decoration is the default; the cluster decoration remains in the toolset for the cases where its mesh-deformation primitive is the right answer. See Foliage & Instancing for how the two compare.

For the node parameters, see Cluster Decoration.

Assembly Decoration

The default foliage tool: place pre-rigged library assemblies onto the skeleton by trait matching, preserving instancing and posing each piece without re-running the simulation.

Trait System

Encoding selection in matched attributes on both sides of a placement. Natsura's mechanism for deciding which library asset goes where on a tree.