The topiaries seemed like a fun challenge to tackle next. My idea was to make a system in Houdini that I could input any shape I wanted into and get a topiary out of.
The setup works by taking an input point source, ray casts an endpoint onto the input shape as the “trunk” branch group and the same process is looped however many times is wanted to create new sets of branches based on the previous set of branches. This quickly built up the
The leaves were made using a simple Vex ramp setup on a line. To get a little more mesh to use for bending the altered line is duplicated and scaled by half on the short axis and combined with the base line. Using Vex again the leaf is meshed. After that there are 2 bends to control shape, the leaf is mirrored and UVed then sent of to be generated on the branches. The controls I setup for the generation are what branch generation to give leaves and how far up can leaves generate on the branches.
