hello sidefx and artists,

how can i model 3d plants whatever if they are real life plants or fantasy plants ?

i want to learn first to draw them in photoshop.

but i want to 3d model them too.

just for concept design not for games engines.

my thanks.

It's a very broad topic that can't be answered briefly. Houdini, just like any other 3D DCC, can model basically anything.

For a ready-to-use example, see Houdini Tree Generator [www.sidefx.com]. For more advanced concepts that might be useful to write your own plant generator, see Differential Mesh Growth [entagma.com], L-System [www.sidefx.com] and many others.

But generally speaking, concept design is still more often done in 2D first.

You can refer to the excellent tutorial Houdini in Bloom [helloluxx.com]by Rich Nosworthy.

Here is a link to a PDF of the classic Algorithmic Beauty of Plants [algorithmicbotany.org] by A. Lindenmayer, the father of L-Systems, which is a very interesting read.

thanks a lot for your comments , so i guess houdini is the better option than other dcc right ?

You probably already found these, but there’s also 3d flower generators like Onyxflower [www.onyxtree.com].

And there’s a flower generator for Blender as well Flower-gen [blendermarket.com]

Speedtree or blender, houdini is the hardcore route. And don't use L-Systems, it's a pain to actually artdirect.

Houdini is great for making procedural plants, and I also wouldn't use L-systems for it.

Most plants and bushes I've made have been a pretty basic setup that worked well:
1) You start with one or more noised lines as the trunk or the main stalk.
2) You scatter points and copy noised lines there to make branches.
3) You scatter points onto the branches and copy noised lines there to make twigs.
4) You scatter points onto the twigs and copy leaves there.

By limiting the angles and tweaking the logic (e.g. for flowers you wouldn't normally have both branches and twigs) you can recreate most plant types very well.