Ancestor Effector

Ancestor Effector lets a branch follow a direction stored on an earlier part of its own lineage: its parent, grandparent, or further back. The direction can be the ancestor's growth direction, or another effector stored on it, so a twig can follow the same influence that shaped its parent. This gives the likeness between scales that real trees have. See Shaping.

Add it from the effector picker on a Grow: the Add Effector button in its Effectors, or the Effectors button on the Natsura toolbar. It has no inputs to wire.

Settings

Attribute is the vector to read, N by default, which is the growth direction. To follow another effector, type that effector's Name, such as a Noise Effector's. Level is how far back to read it: 0 reads the point's own value, 1 (the default) reads it where the branch grew from its parent, 2 from the grandparent, and so on. The direction is normalised, so the Grow row's strength alone decides how strongly it pulls.

Name is the attribute this effector writes, the node's name by default.

The deeper the Level, the harder the result is to reason about, so start at 1.

Status

Ancestor Effector is experimental.