Flower Generator

This documentation will provide information about the Interface as well as a tips and tricks section in order to create beautiful flowers. It will also mention some limitations to the add-on and workarounds.

Interface

Flower Generator can after installing it be found under properties tab in 3D View. Flower Generator has quite a few parameters, this documentation will go through them briefly. However, the absolute best way to learn what they do is to simply try them out.

General flower settings

Number of layers: Sets the number of leaf layers the flower should have.

Number of leafs: Determines the number of leafs per "leaf layer"

Leaf layer Z spread: Adjusts how the leaf layers should spread in the local Z direction (the straw direction).

Leaf layer XY spread: Determines the leaf spread in the local XY plane (perpendicular from the straw direction).

General leaf settings

Leaf size: Sets the size of the leaf.

Width/length: Sets the width as a ratio of length.

Subdivisions per leaf: Sets the number of subdivisions per leaf, especially useful for flowers closer to the camera and with some sort of leaf curvature.

Leaf angle settings

Min leaf angle: Sets the minimum angle of the leaf layer furthest "down". The value 0 is perpendicular to the straw direction (local Z axis) and 1 is parallel to the straw direction.

Max leaf angle: Sets the maximum leaf angle and works similar to Min leaf angle. The leaf layers in between will be spread out evenly between the minimum and maximum leaf angle.

Randomize angle: Randomises the angle each leaf has for more variation.

Axis rotation: Rotate each leaf along their local "length axis".

Randomize axis rotation: Randomizes the axis rotation.

Leaf curvature settings

For all curvature settings, small values are recommended between around -0.2 to 0.2. A high number of subdivisions per leaf is also recommended for these settings.

Leaf length curvature: Determines how the leafs curves from the "leaf tip" up and down, depending on if the value is positive or negative. 

Angle dependant length curvature: How the leaf angle affects the curvature. Most often tend leafs with higher leaf angle to be more curved

Leaf width curvature: Same as Leaf length curvature but curves the leaf from the two sides instead. 

Angle dependant width curvature: Same as Angle dependant length curvature but for the width curvature instead.

Straw settings

Length: Sets the straw length.

Width ratio: The width ratio compared to the length of the straw.

Straw top width: The width of the top of the straw compared to the bottom.

Straw loopcuts: Number of loopcuts for the straw. 

Straw bend ratio: Determines how much the straw should bend compared to the straw length.

Bend type: Determines how the flower should bend.

Materials

Use materials: Determines if you should use pre made materials and nodes. Set as default and is strongly recommended. Thereafter it is possible to change the material nodes to your liking.

Spore settings

Use spores: Sets if you want to use spores for your flower. This can be used as is or work as a start for your own spore design.

Spore base size: Sets the spore base size.

Spore base height/width: Determines how "flat" the spore base should be.

Spore base Z offset: Sets how high up or low from the local Z axis (straw direction) the spore base should be. Small changes around -0.01 to 0.01 is usually recommended.

Spore base color: Change the color of the spore base. This can be made in the spore base node settings manually as well.

Number of spores: Set the spore number for the particle system. This particle system can be adjusted manually for a more personalised flower.

Spore length: Sets the length of the individual spores. 

Tips and tricks

The best way in order to learn what works best is to play around with the parameters. But you will find out that you will likely use some parameters more than others, especially for those large field landscape where detail isn't that important. In that case, you can lower the subdivisions for the leafs between 0 and 2. You can also turn down the number of loopcuts on the straw.

Other than detail, adjusting the number of leafs and number of layers of leafs will significantly change how the flower looks. Also the min and max leaf angle. Remember, for more "closed" flowers, it might be a good idea to increase the curvature as well in order to avoid overlapping of the leafs.

if you want to have a flower with more spread of the leaf layers, you can use the leaf layer Z spread parameter as well as the one with XY spread. It might be a bit hard to get a good result with this one but probably small adjustments will be enough.

If you want flowers with curvature in different directions, the best way to do this is to simply create two different flowers with different curvature as you like them. Then delete one of the straws and put the other leafs into that other flower collection and make that straw parent (and keep transform). 

Perhaps you want to crate a flower with multiple different parameter settings, for example to have different leaf curvatures in different leaf layers. The best way to play around with multiple settings is to create more than one flower on top of each other. Perhaps you create one flower with one leaf layer, a low min leaf angle and positive curvature settings. Then you add another flower on top of that with a higher min leaf angle but a negative curvature. When finished, akl you have to do is to draw the leafs from one of the collections into the other, delete the leftover straw and make the other one a parent (keep transform) and you are done.

Limitations

There are some limitations to what you can do with this genereator. However, there are some ways around the problems even though it might require some manual adjustments.

Foremost, since there might be a lot of leafs, they tend to overlap sometimes. Especially for more closed flowers. One way to reduce this is to change the leaf width curvature to better follow each other. The angle dependant length/width curvature settings also help to curve the leafs more the higher angle they have. You can also reduce the maximum leaf angle to see if that helps. Otherwise, you can always manually adjust the leafs for those renders where the flower is very close. In this banner, I made all of these flowers in about ten minutes and didn't adjust any leafs manually afterwards.