The Grove 2.3 Lets You Draw Trees Directly In Your Scene

Staying true to tradition, Wybren van Keulen aka F12, has rolled out this year's update to his tool for growing 3D trees, with full compatibility for Blender 5.0 and Houdini Indie. Along with a major reduction in storage overhead, The Grove 2.3 brings multiple enhancements, including an upgraded Draw tool.

Instead of just drawing branches on existing trees, you can now draw completely new trees from the ground plane or from scene objects. You're free to add them at any stage of the simulation.

There's also a new Subdivide option that adds intermediate nodes to smooth the curved branches. Another new build option splits an edge along the length of the branch and separates the end-cap geometry. This creates a more GPU-friendly mesh structure, similar to what's used in three.js, WebGL, glTF, and applications like Rhino, helping improve performance in real-time engines.

The Grove now automatically scales and tiles bark textures around the branch circumference, adjusting the texture width to match the branch thickness as the tree grows. This ensures seamless texture repetition without any manual tweaking.

Also, the web demo now offers expanded functionality and a more intuitive interface, inviting users to grow more trees and enjoy the simulation. Check out all the changes and bug fixes in detail here.

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