Dryad Tree Generator

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dryad_thumb.jpgDryad lets you intuitively create beautiful trees for your virtual world or game.

Dryad was created by the Stanford Virtual Worlds Group, as part of our work on broadening the accessibility of virtual worlds. They write:

In Dryad, you create a tree by visually navigating to it through a design space: the space of all trees. This space has close to a hundred dimensions and Dryad lets you move around it as if it were a city map. To help you find your way, Dryads around the world communicate to share which trees were picked in the past. A collaborative mapping of the tree space emerges, which your Dryad uses to gently steer you towards high-quality finds. We call this collaborative design space exploration.

instructions_640.jpg

Dryad currently runs on the Windows and Mac platforms, however, a Linux version will be available

As soon as we finish compiling it. Given how many things we have to statically link, it may be a while.

You can export your tree to Wavefront .OBJ files, which you can import into Blender. For more details, visit the Dryad website.

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    • ccherrett

      interesting

    • http://pitel.borec.cz Pitel

      I prefer Gen3 script for Blender. http://www.geocities.com/bgen3/

    • ccherrett

      ok cool. it works in wine and exports obj to blender with basic materials

    • http://none Slowboy

      Agreed Pitel, I usually try these tree generators, just for fun, and Gen3 is actually far better than any other I have tried. Currently downloading this though, coz it does look pretty, we’ll see!

    • http://www.blendernation.com Bart

      @Pitel: have you tried Dryad? Can you share with us why you prefer Gen3?

    • http://www.alienhelpdesk.com macouno

      Really? When I look at the gen3 page and the script interface images there, they completely scare me off… I mean… Too many settings! As interfaces go, that’s pretty much as bad as it gets.

    • http://microsoft.com coodle

      macouno, that’s the reason why I like ngPlant better than gen3…
      http://ngplant.sourceforge.net/

      Dryad also looks very cool but where’s the relationship with Blender? Can you export to it?

    • Sorbus

      I’ve used both.

      Dryad is very simple, with good realtime feedback to the changes you make, but the output .obj can be *huge*. Only for non-realtime use.

      There is also the ‘community forest’ part, which is fun – your creations are uploaded to their server to share – however, the other users contribution can look so weird they are not worth using. If they had ‘real’ plants as presets it would be better.

      They seem keen to improve it and have sent out surveys to pre-registered users.

      For low poly trees at the moment I much prefer Arbaro ( arbaro.sourceforge.net )

      Sorbus :)

    • http://www.blendernation.com Bart

      @coodle: it exports to Lightwave (.OBJ) file format, which you can import into Blender. I’ll add that info to the post, thanks!

    • http://www.blendernation.com Bart

      Actually, that’s Wavefront .OBJ files, of course.

    • http://microsoft.com coodle

      Thanks Bart. I have tried it myself now, it’s a nice tool. Though you have the randomizer possibilities it seems that you also can tweak the trees a lot.

      Sorbus, the arbaro project looks impressive, thx for that link!

    • http://home.deds.nl/~mp/ ysvry

      tryed this last week as it was mentioned on the kerkythea forum.
      nice but needs a heavy machine. Did test out some extreme tree forms too but next time I logged in the tree space couldnt find them back must be the hundered dimensions, lol. my prefered tree maker is onyx not a freebie but it was given away with a mag some time ago.

    • http://blendernewbies.blogspot.com kernond

      The screenshot is showing you the file format.

    • Master Danix

      Doesn´t work on my computer

      :(

      i know there´s absolutly nothing to do

      :(

    • http://3d-synthesis.com ROUBAL

      Well, I tried to download the File for Windows, and I got only a 6KB Zip file which can’t be uncompressed. I get a Invalid or damaged file warning each time.

      I can’t download anything else from Dryad site…

      Very weird…

    • http://microsoft.com coodle
    • http://blendernewbies.blogspot.com kernond

      You might try downloading it again, I just did a successful download at over 450KB/sec. with no corruption. Maybe it was internet congestion.

    • http://www.blender3d.at carlinhos

      First, I really like the “Community forest” idea. Maybe other treegenerators like LSystem or Gen3 are more versatile, but Dryad delivered me faster usable results, and it is very easy to use and the most interactive of all. For me it is the new number one for tree generating, at least for projects with trees in the background and not as main sujet ;)

    • http://www.creaturefeature.info Ataru

      Pretty cool, I need a lot of trees for a video I’m working on, I think I’ll check this out.

    • Slowboy

      Wow, that’s really rather good! I think we have a new winner… for me at least :]
      Very good realtime feedback!

    • http://www.gamebrewers.com Kukanani

      cool

    • Amir Taaki

      I got so excited when you said game… until i saw the poly count. there is no decent free tools for making trees suitable for realtime rendering. *downloads speedtree*

    • http://www.eofw.org Jarod

      hmmm, it run’s very very slow on an core2duo 2GB Ram?!
      I don’t know why?

    • http://jarod.com Jarod

      i couldn’t download it from the website beacause of “some stupid &^%&^@%#^” WTH
      and i have intel4 and 512 RAM so there’s no chance it will run form me !!#!@#!@$!@$!@4

    • http://ibr-remote.deviantart.com JC

      It is now 2010 April 09.

      Dryad Tree Generator seems to be on permanent haitus.

    • Jon W

      http://dryad.stanford.edu/ this is the new link
      I found.