Tool for generating virtual ivy around any given geometry, based-off a paper written by Bedřich Beneš (2002). Written for an industry masterclass using Fabric Engine 1.13.0, works in many DCC's but the UI is scripted for Maya 2014.

Tested on Fabric Engine 1.13.0 which can be found here - http://dist.fabric-engine.com/FabricEngine/). A version of the Fabric:Splice node is included for 1.15.0 but requires manual set-up.

Simply clone the repo and add the 'ext' folder to the FABRIC_EXTS_PATH env variable. Copy the files from inside the 'maya' folder to your 'maya/-x64/scripts' folder and set up a shelf button to open the python interface to the Fabric:Splice node (an icon is provided in the images folder). The shelf button needs to include the python code:

import FabricVegetation
FabricVegetation.FVegetationUI()

Various UI elements are explained in the following list, these values are also referenced in the documentation although under slightly different names.

• Distribution angle – The conical angle in which the bud can potentially grow to each step
• Distribution samples – The number of random positions the bud will evaluate against each step, the higher the more accurate the growth
• Bud chance – The chance of an inactive lateral bud being grown along a branch for traumatic reiteration-sakes
• Bud active chance – The chance of one of those inactive buds being active upon being created so as to achieve branching
• Leaf chance – The chance of a leaf being created per step, per branch
• Min increment size – The minimum distance each active bud has to grow per step
• Max increment size – The maximum distance each active bud can grow per step
• Increment steps – The number of iterations of growth to go through
• Max thickness – The maximum radius of the branching
• Leaf size – The size of each plane for the leaves
• Quadratic falloff lights – Whether the lights should have a quadratic falloff or not (doesn't work too well at the moment)

• Sunlight doesn't work very well, neither is the UI very prepared for artists to use it yet as there is no clear option and it doesn't check whether a sun already exists
• There is a bug mentioned in the documentation with the clear seeds and clear lights buttons, both of them disconnect all seeds and lights but don't clean the fabricVegetation node's multi-array indexes, making any new seeds/lights have bad naming convention and wrong connections
• The leaves are generally in the correct direction but there are cases where they may seem to be less random than desired, i.e. on a large flat surface, the sizes also need to be randomized
• There are occasional collisions with the environment geometry and the vegetation itself, however most of this should be fixed by now although the leaves do not have collision detection
• When there are no lights in the scene there is a strange bug that makes the vine grow wildly, nearly disregarding the environment geometry

Benes, B. and Millan, E. (2002). Virtual climbing plants competing for space. Proceedings of Computer Animation 2002 (CA 2002).