Grow Draw

Draw growth by hand. Author parts of a tree directly (a hero branch, a sketched silhouette) and have the simulator pick up from your input and fill in the rest procedurally.
Marked experimental in the Houdini node title. The feature is currently in flux; features.yml notes it has been pulled back into development.

Grow Draw is the manual counterpart to the procedural simulator: you draw the parts you want to control directly into the scene and the simulator treats your input as a constraint to grow around. It sits on top of the Custom Module substrate, which lets a hand-authored piece of growth be re-used the same way a procedural module is. You draw a curve, pin it as a branch, and the simulator integrates it into the tree it is growing.

Parameters

The parameter surface is currently sparse and in development. The current exposed controls cover output remapping, point-position controls, and a partial-twist control. Detailed parameter prose will land once the node settles.

ParameterDescription
Output Min / Output MaxOutput range for the remap.
Remap (Position / Value / Interpolation)Ramp controls for the output remap.
Object 1Reference object.
Partial TwistRoll increment along the drawn input.

Number of Points

A multi-parm with one entry per drawn point. Each entry exposes a point reference, a position, and a weight.

Notes

  • Grow Draw shares a foundation with the interactive simulate state and is complementary to it: the interactive state lets you intervene mid-simulation on the geometry the procedure produces, whereas Grow Draw lets you author input the procedure starts from.
  • Reach for it when a hero branch must sit in an exact place, when you want to sketch a silhouette and let the procedure fill in around it, or when the procedural rules don't reach the shape you want even with effectors and posing.

See also: Interactive tools (Shaping) · Simulate · Wrangle · Effectors (overview)