Check out neat Blender plugin Baga Ivy Generator 2
Originally posted on 24 November 2022. Scroll down for news of the Baga Ivy Generator 2 update.
Architectural visualisation artist and tools developer Antoine Bagattini has released Baga Ivy Generator, a neat new plugin for generating procedural vegetation in Blender.
The tool – an expanded version of Bagattini’s popular free ivy generator plugin – makes it possible to grow over 30 species of climbing plants over 3D surfaces in a scene.
Good-looking, easily controllable 3D ‘ivy’ for architectural visualisation and illustration in Blender
Like its predecessor, Baga Ivy Generator uses Blender’s new geometry nodes system to generate 3D vegetation procedurally to cover any underlying mesh.
However, unlike the free version, users aren’t limited to ivy alone: the plugin generates 30 species of climbing plants, including different types of Clematis, Wisteria, Bougainvillea, roses and hops.
As well as selecting entire meshes, users can guide the growth of the plants by drawing paths on a mesh’s surface: both to direct the growth of the central stem, and to define the extent of side shoots.
Branches can be deleted according to proximity to other objects – making it possible to remove ivy from windows, for example – and the form of the foliage adjusted by editing parameters for leaves and flowers.
The vegetation is compatible with Blender’s Eevee and Cycles render engines, with a proxy system to improve interactive performance, and the option to set different resolutions for the viewport and final render.
It is also possible to generate loopable wind animations for the plants.
Updated 22 August 2023: Baga Ivy Generator 2 is out.
(Full disclosure: it was actually released two weeks ago, but we’ve just posted a story on a new ivy generation plugin for Maya, so this seemed like a good opportunity to do an update.)
The update adds two new ivy generators, giving users a choice of Fast, Accurate and Precision modes, making it possible to trade computation speed against fine control.
Precision mode, aimed at generating sparser patches of ivy, lets users create ivy branch by branch.
As well as ivy, the update adds 40 new preset species of climbing plants.
System requirements
Baga Ivy Generator 2 is compatible with Blender 3.5+. It has a MSRP of $55, down $5 since version 1.
The free ivy generator is still available, both as a standalone tool and as part of the free BagaPie modifier, both of which are compatible with Blender 3.0.
Read more about Baga Ivy Generator 2 on Antoine Bagattini’s Gumroad store