Procedural Trees

Hi!
The main goal of this project was to deepen my understanding of trees and proceduralism while further developing my skills in Unreal Engine. I initially began working in Houdini, but quickly encountered some restrictions with the free version, particularly when exporting. This led me to switch to Blender's Geometry Nodes, where I had more freedom to export and work without these constraints.
Starting over in Blender allowed me to build on the foundational knowledge I gained in Houdini, giving me a clear direction for this project. While working with Geometry Nodes, I identified limitations in how Blender handles attributes, vertex colors, mesh separation, and other elements when applying modifiers. To overcome these challenges, I developed an add-on that automates much of the process.
The geometry was built in Blender, and the bark texture was created from a photo I took at my local park. The branches were modeled first, then baked onto a plane using the GrabDoc add-on. I used Unreal Engine materials to add variation to the trees and finally rendered the scene using the Movie Render Queue.
Overall, I am extremely pleased with the result. The knowledge and skills I acquired during this project will undoubtedly benefit me in the future.

** The props in the first image are from an old project.**