Node Reference
Every Natsura node with a documentation page, A to Z, with its category and what it does.
Natsura ships with over 200 nodes. Most are utilities and machinery under the hood. The ones you use are on the Natsura toolbar or under Natsura in the Tab menu inside a geometry network; nodes marked "Not in the Tab menu" are hidden there. This page lists every node with a page in these docs, A to Z, and marks the ones labelled experimental in the Tab menu. The atlas nodes are also experimental as a group; see Atlas Workflow.
For an overview by topic, see Simulation, Decorations, Effectors, Mapping and Traits. Nodes you meet inside other nodes are listed under Internal Nodes.
| Node | Category | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Ancestor Effector | Effector | Reads a direction attribute from an ancestor (parent, grandparent, etc.) in the growth hierarchy. Experimental. |
| Assembly Decoration | Decoration | Places pre-rigged library assemblies at points on a tree using trait matching. |
| Assembly Edit | Assembly | Turns parts of an assembly library, or single joints in their rigs, after rigging. |
| Assembly Pack | Assembly | Packs geometry and a skeleton into an assembly. The assembly nodes use it inside. |
| Assembly Resource | Assembly | Wrapper that prepares a library of rigged assemblies for an Assembly Decoration. |
| Atlas 3D | Atlas | Bends a flat leaf mesh into shape by its distance from the curves in its second input. |
| Atlas Emboss | Atlas | Shapes a flat leaf mesh from its outline, spine and vein curves. Runs inside Atlas Mesh when Shaping is on. |
| Atlas Layout | Atlas | Straightens the separate leaves along their spines, names and types them, and lays them out. The last step of Atlas Wizard. |
| Atlas Material | Atlas | Builds the leaf material from an atlas's textures, reading each channel from a file or deriving it in Copernicus. The first step of Atlas Wizard. |
| Atlas Mesh | Atlas | Traces, meshes, shapes and splits the atlas card into separate leaves. The middle step of Atlas Wizard. Not in the Tab menu. |
| Atlas Source | Atlas | Splits a traced atlas mesh into separate leaves, each with an outline hull and a spine, and merges small fragments. Spelled "Nastura Atlas Source" in the Tab menu. |
| Atlas Trace | Atlas | Cuts the leaf shapes out of an atlas card by tracing the alpha, and meshes each outline. |
| Atlas Wizard | Atlas | Turns a leaf atlas into separate leaf meshes in one node: Atlas Material, then Atlas Mesh, then Atlas Layout. |
| Bake | Utility | COPs-based texture baker. Converts high-poly geometry into colour, height, and normal maps. |
| Build Assembly Rig | Assembly | Auto-rigging step that produces Natsura's assembly rig, preserving instancing through placement. Not in the Tab menu. |
| Classify | Assembly | Standalone node exposing trait-based classification of assembly library entries. |
| Clusters Decoration | Decoration | Attaches and deforms external meshes (leaves, flowers, fruit) along the skeleton. |
| Core Decoration | Decoration | Base node for creating custom decorations. Not in the Tab menu. |
| Create Graft Mesh | Trunks | Remeshes imported high-poly geometry and prepares the region where procedural extensions attach. |
| Create Proxy | Utility | Makes a simple stand-in shape for each piece of its input. A building block inside the assembly tools. Not in the Tab menu. |
| Debug Tree Rig | Utility | Inspects the rig, skin, joints, and bone-capture state of a tree before export. Not in the Tab menu. |
| Deflection Effector | Effector | Gives a direction to the nearest parts of the same tree, so branches can respond to how close they are to the rest of the crown. Experimental. |
| Delay | Growth | Holds the growth wired into it back for a set number of generations. |
| Direction Effector | Effector | Outputs a constant directional vector as an effector growth nodes can read. Experimental. |
| Effector | Effector | The core effector node. Base for authoring custom effectors in VEX. Experimental. |
| Effector Template | Effector | Adds an effector stack to a Houdini Digital Asset you build. Not in the Tab menu. |
| Export Unreal Nanite Assembly | Export | Exports trees to Unreal as Nanite Skeletal Assemblies, with a wind file per tree. |
| Gravity Effector | Effector | A uniform gravity direction across the tree, straight down by default. Experimental. |
| Grow | Growth | Adds a run of growth: length, width, angles, forks, effectors and decorations. |
| Grow Draw | Growth | Brings hand-drawn curves into Natsura. In Houdini the node is Natsura Custom Module. Experimental. |
| Identify Shared Instances | Utility | Tags geometry so instance relationships survive downstream processing and export. In Houdini, identify_shared_instances. Not in the Tab menu. |
| Import Assembly | Assembly | Brings source geometry (SOPs, USD, BGEO) into the assembly workflow for auto-rigging. |
| Import Highpoly | Trunks | Loads high-resolution scanned or photogrammetry meshes for trunk extraction and reference. |
| Import Props | Utility | Loads a set of mesh files (leaves, flowers, rocks) and prepares them as parts. Experimental. |
| Kill | Growth | Ends the shoots routed to it. |
| Magnet Effector | Effector | Gives a direction to geometry wired into it, such as a sphere, within its Range. Experimental. |
| Map | Mapping | The building block for parameter control. Applies one operation and blends the result. |
| Map Attribute | Mapping | Reads a graph attribute as a map, without remapping, for use inside other map nodes. Experimental. |
| Map Blend | Mapping | Combines two maps, A and B, with a Mode such as Add, Multiply or Blend (Lerp), and an optional Mask. Experimental. |
| Map Constant | Mapping | One fixed value as a map, to share between parameters or use inside other map nodes. Experimental. |
| Map If | Mapping | Compares A with B and outputs one value when the test passes and another when it fails. |
| Map Random | Mapping | Emits a stable per-internode random value into a Map chain. Experimental. |
| Mapping Template | Mapping | Authoring node for defining mappable parameters on a target HDA. Experimental. Not in the Tab menu. |
| Noise Effector | Effector | Generates a 3D noise vector field to influence growth direction. Experimental. |
| Pivot Edit | Assembly | Interactive state for placing pivots on assembly geometry when auto-rigging fails. |
| Prune | Growth | Tests a condition on each branch over several cycles. Goes into a Grow's Graph - Prune input. Experimental. |
| Repeat | Growth | Repeat Begin and Repeat End run a piece of the growth graph several times over. |
| Rig to Assembly | Assembly | Converts a Simulate's output into a reusable assembly library to decorate another tree. |
| Scan Material | Trunks | Assigns a material to a scanned mesh inside the high-poly import and graft workflows. Experimental. |
| Scan Profiles | Trunks | Picks the open ends of a scan where procedural growth continues. Experimental. |
| Scan Rig | Trunks | Gives a scanned section a skeleton, which Scan to Tube rebuilds as a clean tube. Experimental. |
| Scan to Parts | Trunks | Filters a scanned mesh to a selected region via interactive viewport selection. Experimental. |
| Scan to Patch | Trunks | Identifies a smaller square region within a tube section for patch-style tiling textures. Experimental. |
| Scan to Tube | Trunks | Turns a rigged tubular section into a cleanly-UVed tube for use as a tiling-texture source. Experimental. |
| Seed Points | Utility | Makes the points a Simulate grows trees from, for stands and forests, each with source_age, source_species and source_random attributes to map from. Experimental. |
| Select Decoration | Decoration | Controls which parts of a tree get which decoration, by a weight or map per input. Experimental. |
| Signal | Utility | Makes geometry readable while the tree grows, as an attribute named after the Signal, for a Wrangle to steer with. |
| Simplify Tree Rig and Skin | Utility | Reduces joint count and skin complexity before export. The standard pre-export step. |
| Simulate | Core | Runs the growth recipe and outputs the tree and its rig on one output. |
| Split | Growth | Sends growth down several paths at once, one per input. |
| Surface Decoration | Decoration | Generates skin or bark geometry for the skeleton. |
| Surface Resource | Decoration | Defines the material a Surface Decoration applies: colour, normal, roughness, displacement, tint. |
| Surface Wizard | Decoration | The meshing step inside the older Surface Decoration 1.0, kept for older scenes. Not in the Tab menu. |
| Switch | Growth | Sends each shoot down one of two paths depending on a condition. |
| Treeparameterize | Utility | Resamples and parameterises imported tree geometry into the form Natsura's nodes expect. Not in the Tab menu. |
| Trunk Decoration | Decoration | Puts a prepared trunk mesh, such as a scan, on a Grow for procedural growth to extend. |
| Wind Config | Utility | Splits the tree into wind layers for Unreal's Dynamic Wind. |
| Wind Previs | Utility | In-Houdini preview of a Wind Config chain, not one-for-one with the engine-side wind. To see the layers, display the Wind Config. Not in the Tab menu. |
| Wrangle | Growth | Runs your own VEX on the growing tips to write attributes for maps, switches and prunes. |