Today we’ll be talking about the basics of the Sapling Tree Generator add-on in Blender. I’ll be using the 2.90.1 version of Blender. Delete the default cube if it’s still there.
Modeling a tree from scratch is rather tedious, especially the leaves. Fortunately we don’t have to do it. Instead, we’ll use a Blender add-on. So, first we need to enable the add-on. To do that, go to the Edit menu and select Preferences…:
In the Blender Preferences window select Add-ons (A) and type ‘tree’ in the search box (B) to find all add-ons with names containing the word ‘tree’. If you don’t have any other add-on installed, you’ll probably see just one add-on in the list, the Add Curve: Sapling Tree Gen add-on. Check the box (C) to enable the tree generator add-on:
Now close the Blender Preferences window. The add-on is ready to use.
The 3D cursor is now at the World origin, so this is where the tree will be created. As the first part of the add-on name’s suggests, the tree is going to be a curve, not a mesh. This is why, in order to add a tree, you have to hit Shift + A (or use the Add menu) and first select Curve and then Sapling Tree Gen:
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Now the tree will be added (A). You will also see the panel on the left (B) that is related to the tree – you have to expand it in order to see the whole of it. Remember that this menu will be gone as soon as you click anywhere in the 3D Viewport. So make sure you don’t do that until you’re done with the tree. If you click somewhere by accident and the menu disappears, just delete the tree and add it again:
So, we have a basic tree. It has no leaves, though. We’re going to fix this in a minute.
Now, we can tweak all the different parameters as much as we want. Let’s have a look at some Geometry settings (A) first. This is what your tree looks like if you uncheck Bevel (B):
You can play with the scale and scale variation:
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Go ahead and try some of the other parameters out. Here we are talking just about the Geometry settings, but there are many other settings available in the drop-down:
You can also load one of the existing presets. Just click on the Load Preset drop-down (A) and select small_pine (B) for example:
Now we have a conifer:
It looks better, but we still don’t have any leaves on the tree. In order to add some, click on the Settings drop-down (A) and select Leaves (B):
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Check the Show Leaves checkbox (A) and the leaves will appear on the tree (B). Zoom in on the tree a bit to see it better:
As you can see, the number of leaves is now 500. Let’s change it to 400 (A). Also, we want the leaves to be slightly longer, so let’s set Leaf Scale to 0.40 (B):
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I think it looks better, but if you zoom in even more, you will see that the leaves are rectangular:
It’s not a problem if you’re not going to see the trees from so close, but, anyway, let’s change Leaf Shape to Hexagonal:
Now they look more like needles. For me the trees look fine. If you want, you can play with all the different settings to see how they affect the tree.
When you’re done with the tree, you can finally click anywhere in the 3D Viewport and dismiss the settings panel. As you remember, the tree is a curve, so you may want to convert it to mesh. To do so, you should go to the Object menu and under Convert to select Mesh from Curves/Meta/Surf/Text.
Feel free to play around with the tree generator.