Surface Decoration

Surface Decoration meshes the trunk and branches. It sweeps a profile along each strand, sized by the strand's width, with UVs, and applies the material from a Surface Resource. It is the decoration that gives a tree its bark.

Setting one up

Select the Grows and choose Surface Decoration from the toolbar's Decorate menu; one Surface Decoration can serve every Grow. Remove the Trunk Preview decoration from those Grows, or it meshes them too. Wire a Surface Resource into the decoration's first input for the material; with none, it uses a plain default.

Resolution

Max Steps, under Profiles, caps the resolution around each branch (20 by default), and Density scales it. Along the branch, Resample (under Strands) is none by default, or step length or subdivide. Density, Step Length, Subdivide and Interpolate are mappable, so the trunk can be dense and the tips light: map them from the distance to the root, and the resolution falls away towards the ends. A Step Length near 0 makes a very dense mesh.

Displacement from the Surface Resource moves the mesh itself rather than shading it, so it shows only where there is resolution to move. Displacement Scale scales it.

Width, ends and UVs

The Width folder has Smooth Width, Width Min, Width Max and Width Scale, each greyed out until its toggle is on. End Cap Type closes the cut ends of branches: None (the default), Single Polygon, Grid or Side Single Polygon. U Scale and V Scale, under Uvs, set how often the texture tiles on the branch.

Surface effectors

The Surface Effectors stack displaces the surface with any effector, weighted by a value or a map, in Surface + mode (the default) or Tangent. See Effectors.

Status

Spiral (Inherit, None) under Strands can look the same either way. In the Width folder, the Smooth Width toggle is labelled Limit Min Width and the Width Max toggle is labelled Label. The older Surface Decoration 1.0 is hidden from the Tab menu and kept for older scenes. Meshing is being reworked.