Now that I have a single blooming leaf bud, I need to connect it to a stem. I am revisiting my USD Challenge project where my leaves connected to the stem as it grew.
While the double vellum simuation of a bud inside a bud gave good results- it seems impractical to do for an entire vine. I shifted my focus to creating a growing curve with other curves attached to it.
The first thing I tried was the Carve node. While this worked for a singular curve, when I tried to use it for multiple curves, it would grow them all at once.
I asked Gemini if it could give me some VEX code which would grow all the curve based on their position. I ended up using a Sort node to make sure the point numbers aligned with their positions. And then in a
wrangle, added a slider that would delete points based on the point number.
Some issues that I still have to fix are the popping of the leaf buds. I also have not aligned this stem version with the vellum leaves yet. I will be referencing my vine from the USD Challenge
as well as deleting buds based on the curveu value to try to align the growing stem with the vellum leaves.
I did a timeshift in a for each loop containing a copy to points which would offset the animation for every leaf bud. I added some attribute noise on the stem so it would naturally sway.
I also started working on preliminary look development. Here is what I have so far. The texture map is just an image I found on the internet for now. I was focusing on dialing in the shader properties.
Here is my rendered video of the simulation.
WHAT'S NEXT
1. Fixing the collision issues
2. Leaves have to be less bouncy
3. Fix Leaves to Stem connection
4. Create a better texture map for the leaves
5. Trying to get a groom rendered out
6. Stretch Goal- Dissolve growth simulation to a particle simulation to connect to teammate's renders.
