Animated Tree - Tyflow Setup

Important! Tyflow FREE or PRO for 3DS MAX 2021 or higher is required to make this setup work!

You can get Tyflow from: https://docs.tyflow.com/download/

FEATURES

• This is a Tyflow-based animated tree and leaves system, suitable to be applied to your tree meshes so that they can move to the wind.
• This setup expects some experience with the Tyflow plugin and its options.
• No need to start from Speedtree! You can use whatever static tree mesh you have and it will work.
• No textures are provided! This setup is intended to be used with your own meshes. The provided mesh is only for reference.
• Simply place your mesh at 0,0,0, check that the scale is correct, and select it in the Birth Skeleton. It will setup everything automatically. Then adjust the box to cover your trunk (this will remove leaves from the trunk) and you should be done!

  

• The setup turns your mesh automatically into smaller Physx shapes and binds them. This generates an accurate physx simulation that moves using a "Force" operator that mimics the wind.
• You can change the provided tree mesh to your own and then apply your usual shaders and modifiers to your tree, like displacement.
• You can change the provided leaves to your own leaves in the "Leaves shapes" operator.
• This will work with all render engines that support instances (tested on V-ray and Redshift)
• You can turn on and off the ability to make some leaves fall due to the wind. Simply disable the "Split" operator.
• This setup uses the original tree mesh for calculations and a copy of this to skin it to the Tyflow branches. The video above provides details on how to do this (don't worry, it's easy)

• Quick tips are added with instructions about the most common adjustments to help you get started.

NOTES

• I recommend optimizing your tree mesh as much as you can, since the skeleton will represent your mesh. If you try to use a very complex mesh, your simulation will likely crash or will take a very long time. Start with a simple mesh and add detail (branches) to see what is a good compromise between quality and iteration speed. If your mesh is too complex, try using a retopology modifier or a prooptimize modifier to lower the number of polygons.
• Will this work with Tyflow FREE? Yes, the simulation will work with tyflow FREE, although it will be slower. The limitation you have is that you won't be able to export a tycache, since this is a PRO feature. You will have to render without caching in one single machine. If you attempt to render this over a network without caching it, every machine will likely render a different simulation.

Hope you like it!