Hi! I'm trying to work out a way of animating natural-looking plant growth with polygons. I need to create a time-lapse style growth effect to feature in a game project, so it absolutely has to be done with polygons (and idealy with Maya). I'm sure I've seen a technique involving polygons forming along a path or curve - does anyone have any insight into this? Alternatively, does anyone have a different technique for achieving this growth effect? Thanks very much for your time, Jamie.

I have a buddy who made some pretty nice-looking plants using L systems. I would link the paper, but it's in danish...

Looks very interesting, but I'm not sure that a procedural system will work, given that the plants need to end up in a very specific form for technical game-related reasons. Or am I wrong?

Mayas paint effects contain some trees, witch can be converted to polygons,
but paint effects trees can`t be grown "automagicaly". (some bones & skinning is neaded)


Tree Generator script writen in Mel is little bit old, but is good starting
point for tree generation programming. (script neads some additional coding
for growth animations)

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/c/tree-generator


xfrog is one of the best tree generation plugins and it can produce growth animations.

http://www.xfrogdownloads.com/greenwebNew/products/productStart.htm


And finally if you realy want to use Ultimate tree generation plugin, then
you must make it your self :P

http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/

/Tyrian

Plant growth can be very accurately modeled using fractals. If you could use the fractal math to generate the side and placement of polygons, it ought to be able to model plant growth. You'd want math that does the following (for a woody plant):
1. Each branch is a polygonal cone or pyramid generated from an anchor point in the center of its base.
2. Each branch begins at size 0 or 1, then is repeatedly redrawn over time, scaled larger. They grow fastest (percentage wise) at first, slower and slower as time goes on.
3. In steps over time, first the main branch is spawned from the ground, then the side branches from the main stem, then their side branches, etc. - this is the fractal part. Optionally, you may want to make a wide spot in the parent branch which the new one is spawning from.

Then leaves or flowers would require some different math. A leaf or flower goes through two distinct stages, budding and unfurling.
B1. Each bud is shaped like an onion dome or football. The same as a branch, the bud spawns from an anchor point in one end and gradually grows larger over time.
B2. After the bud has grown for X time, or perhaps to some multiple of its original size, it switches to unfurling. A flower bud splits into radially symmetrical parts corresponding to the number of petals - 6 for iris or tulip, 10 for rose, 20 or more for daisy, etc. Odd numbered petals form the inner row and even numbered ones form the outer row - the two rows develop differently. Leaves split differently - they divide along the meridian towards the sky, while the meridian towards the ground becomes the central vein on the underside of the leaf. The divided top folds down to the sides, and some types of leaves also develop serrations, 'fingers', thorns, etc. In both cases the flower or leaf grows larger as it finishes developing into its adult shape.

Quote: Original post by Ghachii
Looks very interesting, but I'm not sure that a procedural system will work, given that the plants need to end up in a very specific form for technical game-related reasons. Or am I wrong?

If they need to end up in a specific form for game reasons, record the growth process once and use them every time you grow a tree, then you'll always get the same tree rather than randomly generated ones.

I saw a very nicely done plant growth in viva pinata.
it's pretty cheap now so if you have an xbox, why not pick it up and study the plants in that game.

it's not realistic plants, but the growth of them is very beautiful IMO.