Render, Explore and Modify Your Own Tree

Life is what makes our planet different from all the others. Life is all we have, and, for some reason, we try to improve it all the time. But we are not the only living things on Earth. Animals, and also plants, share this wonderful feeling of being alive. Of course, in a somewhat different manner, but an important one. Plants keep us alive and whether we like it or not, we cannot live without them. We have a simple but very important bond with them. Even if we destroy habitats and cut trees down, we cannot live without the air that they give us. This is why we must understand how they work, and see that their purpose on Earth is to help us.

Arbaro is an implementation of the tree generating algorithm described in Jason Weber and Joseph Penn’s "Creation and Rendering of Realistic Trees." Arbaro is a piece of software that will allow you to create any kind of tree you want, by proving it information to work with, and transform it into a nice, beautifully rendered tree.

The Looks

Arbaro is a program designed to be available on all the Java support platforms. Despite that, it has a pretty nice interface that will give you access to all the tree creation tools you will ever need. You can start to create a tree from scratch, or, if you want, modify one of the existent.

You can also view in real time how the tree rendering operation is affecting your tree, individually view, study and even change branches, leaves, or the trunk. Anything can be seen from various angles in order to make the whole rendering process a lot quicker and easier.

The Works

Arbaro is a pretty complex program when it comes to tree rendering. Upon entering the general tab, you see that the tree shape panel lets you customize your tree, give it a species name, change its shape, the number of levels, the scale, size, ratio power and up attraction. All these give you an important base when starting to build your tree and are the most important things before moving on. After selecting the species name and shape, you can edit the trunk radius. This tab is pretty nice because you can edit ratio, flares and lobes how you want and view in real time how the changes affect the tree.

The leaves panel is very interesting, as you can set up the number of leaves available on the whole tree, and even on each portion of the tree. You can scale and blend the leaves if we want. We can edit the prune the same you edited the leaves, but mentioning that prune width and power are dependable on the prune ration that you have previously set up. Also, in the general tab, you are able to setup the leaf quality and smoothness in order to create the most realistic tree you want.

After setting up the general setting of the tree, it’s time to take the tree from scratch. Level 0 (the trunk) can be easily modified at your own leisure. Firstly, you can make some changes to the length and taper, adjust the curves to the direction you want, manage each tree split, and setup the number, rotation and distribution of branches.

The next levels (1, 2 and 3) have the same setup type, but each affects its own portion of the tree. In each, you can adjust the length and taper, the curvature, splitting and branching. All come, as expected, with its own set of animations and real time rendering, so it’s really fun to make your own tree.

After setting up all the portions of the tree, it’s time to render your tree in 3D, and export it to the format you want. To do so, you must access the Render Tree option from the File menu. Here, you can select the place on your Mac to render the scene, the image with and height, and after pressing start, you have yourself the new, beautifully rendered tree that you wanted. You can export the tree to the format you want from the same panel.

You are also able to customize Arbaro from the Setup panel. Here, you can modify things like the export path, choose an output path, the render width and height, the default seed and also check the Antialias option if you want it in your tree preview.

The Good

There are many good things about Arbaro, like the real time rendering, the fact that it’s free (GPL), intuitive, easy to use and helps you create your own tree. Also, it’s a nice feature to customize each tiny detail, like leaves and branches. Another nice thing are the samples that will allow you to get an inspiration for your own tree, or even modify them accordingly.

The Bad

What can it be bad for a tree rendering program? Well, the rendering could be done badly. It’s not this case, I can assure you. The only bad thing I came upon when using Arbaro was the scarce interface that could have used a little redesigning.

The Truth

If you need to render a tree for professional use, or for fun, Arbaro is the best solution. You can change anything you want about your tree, and use the exported file anywhere you want. It’s nice to create your own tree with Arbaro. You should definitely give it a try and see for yourselves.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: