Surface Materials

A Surface Decoration meshes the skeleton into trunk and branches. A Surface Resource holds the material it wears: a tint and colour, normal and roughness maps, and optional displacement. Wire the Surface Resource into the Surface Decoration's first input. Swap the resource and the tree changes its look without being meshed again, unless displacement is on, since that moves the mesh.

Displacement

Turn on Use Displacement on the Surface Resource and pick a height map as the Displacement Texture. The displacement moves the mesh itself, it isn't a shader effect, so you only see it when the mesh is dense enough. Raise the resolution on the Surface Decoration: Max Steps (under Profiles) sets it around the branch, and Resample (under Strands) sets it along the branch. Density under Profiles, and Step Length, Subdivide and Interpolate under Resample, are mappable, so you can keep the trunk dense and let the resolution fall off toward the tips, for example by mapping them from root distance.

Other places a Surface Resource goes

• An Assembly Resource takes Surface Resources in its Materials list, each applied to a group of faces. This is how leaves and other parts get their material. See Atlas Materials.
• Create Graft Mesh, in Resource texture mode, uses one for the ends of a scanned trunk where growth continues. See Trunk Extension.

A Trunk Decoration carries its own textures, usually from a bake, and Override Material lets you give it different ones.

Related

• Surface Resource and Surface Decoration.
• Trunks & Meshing, where the surface is meshed.