An Ivy Generator

(from An Ivy Generator...)

A few months ago I was looking for a new sample scene to test watercolor renderings. I was thinking of something complex, filled with vegetation - like trees overgrown with ivy. Fortunately I was able to implement a procedural system so that the ivy would grow by itself. The result is a small tool allowing a virtual ivy to grow in your 3d world.

The ivy grows from one single root following different forces: a primary growth direction (the weighted average of previous growth directions), a random influence, an adhesion force towards other objects, an up-vector imitating the phototropy of plants, and finally gravity. This simple scheme reveals that the goal was not to provide a biological simulation of growing ivy but rather a simple approach to producing complex and convincing vegetation that adapts to an existing scene. The ivy generator imports and exports obj+mtl files.

Here are precompiled versions for Win32, MacOS, and Linux including the source code of this project under the GNU General Public Licence. The MacOS port was kindly done by Robert Templeton (Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone). The Linux port was kindly done by Ruben Lopez. Previous releases and additional stuff can be found in the download section.

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