LogInThomas van den Berg has presented Planter, a robust tool for plant simulation currently in early alpha.
On September 1, 2021, Indie Game Developer Thomas van den Berg, a.k.a. Noio Games, released Cloud Gardens, a relaxing game about using plants to overgrow abandoned wasteland dioramas, praised by many for its lush stylized vegetation.
Nearly two years after the game was released, the developer has issued a surprising announcement, revealing that Planter, a plant simulation tool used for Cloud Gardens, is now available as an Editor package for Unity. Currently in early alpha, the tool enables you to quickly and easily generate appealing greenery, including trees, vines, and more. You can learn more and download Planter by visiting Thomas' GitHub page.
"Plants are generated based on Branches. Each branch is a small piece of the plant, which will spawn "child" branches in specific positions," commented the developer on how the tool works. "Branches are set up in Branch Templates, prefabs that determine what the branch looks like and where the Sockets are for child branches."
"The Branch Template contains a bunch of configuration determining how and where this branch will grow, this is the meat of the plant setup"
"For each Branch Socket, you can set which types of branches are allowed to grow there, with a percentage probability."
Besides being the creator of Cloud Gardens, Thomas is also well-known for his incredible pixel art projects.
Earlier, the developer also showcased a serene voxel-looking birch tree forest environment with a car driving across a bumpy bridge over a lake, created using Unity and PixPaint, the developer's plug-in for Blender that enables one to prepare 3D models for pixel painting, and a cool Unity-powered setup for creating pixelated dust trails, which cast accurate shadows and fade out over time
If you would like to learn more about Thomas, we also recommend checking out our recent interview with the developer, in which he spoke about his first project, discussed the early development of Cloud Gardens, talked about PixPaint and how it can be used to make 3D pixel art, and more.
We highly encourage you to visit Thomas' Twitter page to check out more of the developer's awesome works.
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