Procedural parameters, Tactile:Wood

What this panel is for

The right panel has been with you from the start: it decides what the game will add around your creation. You have sculpted a framework; the procedural side extends it, branches it out, roots it and makes it grow. These settings say how.

Everything you touch here is saved with your variant, as a difference from the game's own settings. What you do not touch keeps following the game, and will follow its future changes. You therefore carry your decisions only, not a full snapshot of the settings of the day.

No fixed values, only ranges

Most settings come in pairs, a minimum and a maximum. The game draws a value between the two for every single tree. That is where variety comes from: two trees of your model grow from the same drawing, but not with the same branch length nor the same height.

Five trees from the same model, five values drawn within the same range.

A minimum equal to the maximum therefore gives identical trees on that point. Sometimes that is what you want, often it is not.

Judging before deciding

A setting cannot be judged on a single tree. Tick Solid view, switch to Procedural, and use the Draw button to roll again on the same tree. Look at five or six before settling a range, otherwise you are tuning your species on one lucky roll.

The groups

Trunkhow thickness decreases towards the top, how fine the twigs are, the cleanup of twigs stuck to the trunk, and the draw seed.

Branchesthe branches the game adds on its own: how many starts, in how many segments, how long, with how much taper and how much twisting.

Ramificationwhat grows out of those branches: how many children, over how many generations, with how much droop, and the density of the fine ramification.

Growthhow much the tree grows, and how that budget is split. Putting it all into height gives a giraffe neck; leaving some to the rest gives a shorter but wider and denser tree.

Rootsthe roots at the foot of the tree: how many, how long, how deep they dive.

Roots - detailthe detail of their own ramification.

Burlsthe knots and swellings of the wood.

Going back

The reset button next to a group title returns that group to the values it had when the game started. Back to the game's settings, at the very bottom, resets the whole panel. Neither can be undone with Ctrl + Z, unlike the rest of the workshop.

Not every tree will carry your framework

By default, about one tree in three receives the added growth. The others keep the shape the game gave them: they do carry your bark and your foliage, but not the branches you sculpted.

This is deliberate. A grown tree is heavier to display, forever, and it is also what keeps a large specimen remarkable in the middle of a forest. Do not be surprised to see your trees living alongside more ordinary oaks.

What this panel does not hold

Some settings describe the variation from one tree to the next rather than the tree itself: the waviness of the trunk, slender or stocky individuals, shifts in tint and bark. They are read at render time, where nothing knows which species it is looking at any more, and therefore cannot belong to a model.

They stay global, in the game's own settings, and that is why they do not appear here.

Procedural parameters