Decorations

Decorations are how Natsura does meshing. A decoration is a meshing process you assign to a Grow: a surface swept along the branches, a scanned trunk, assemblies placed on the twigs. The Simulate grows the tree first, then runs each decoration on the parts of the tree its Grows made. You don't need a SOP chain after the Simulate to turn the skeleton into a mesh.

To see the tree before any decoration runs, set Output to Skeleton on the display toolbar.

The decorations

Every new Grow comes with Trunk Preview in its first decoration slot, a quick preview mesh. Remove it once you assign a real decoration to that Grow, or it meshes the Grow too.

Assign a decoration

Select the Grows and choose a decoration from the toolbar's Decorate menu: it is created and assigned to all of them. To assign a decoration you already have, drag it into an empty slot under Decorations on the Grow. Each slot has Jump to Decoration and Remove Decoration. A Grow has eight slots.

A Surface Resource is not a decoration and doesn't go in a slot. It gives a surface its material: wire it into the Surface Decoration's first input.

One decoration assigned to several Grows meshes them together, so the geometry from separate Grows can join up. Several decorations on one Grow each run, which is how a branch gets both a bark surface and foliage.

Previews

Until it is assigned, a decoration shows its result on a built-in preview tree, so you can set it up on its own. The display toolbar lets you switch which tree it previews on; Simulates the decoration isn't assigned to are greyed out.

Mapping and effectors

Decoration parameters with a map button can be mapped like those on a Grow. On a decoration, Map from attribute lists the tree's attributes first, then the placed parts' own. Assembly Decoration and Surface Decoration also have effector stacks.

How decorations run

A decoration is a compiled SOP network. Parameter values reach it as data, so changing a value re-runs the decoration without rebuilding it; changing the network inside it recompiles it.

You can build your own on top of Core Decoration, which is hidden from the Tab menu in 0.7.3. See Build Your Own Decorations.

Status

Meshing is the next area of work. The Surface Decoration is being brought up to production standard with every parameter mappable, and branch surfaces built from stacked layers and joined parts are planned.