Trees in 3D

SketchUp Pro
1

how are 3D trees made unique? When duplicated into 100s of copies and each of them unique in order to modify each without affecting the other? thanks

2

Learn the basics. You want to use groups or components depending on what you are trying to achieve.

https://learn.sketchup.com/

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3

Right click on the component>Make Unique

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4

I just said, the trees have to be unique so that one will not affect the other when the first tree was modified. Groups or components don’t matter as long as each of them are unique. that is the goal. Each tree with leaves and limbs have to be unique for variety

5

I right clicked on the tree, and pressed “unique”, and when the “M” key (move tool) and “ctrl” key was used together to duplicate another tree (after 'Unique" was hit), when I tried to move the leaves around or change colors or limbs, the first tree was highlighed with the second tree, effectively trying to make the first tree follow the second tree appearance

7

can I upload a
skp model, thanks

8

You have to make each instance unique after copying and before modifying.

9

It worked as designed. The component you selected was made unique, and then you made a copy of that component after which both are children of the same new component definition.

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10

Yes, drag it to the reply box. If it is too large you might have to use WeTransfer or DropBox.

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11

if you havent seen it already :wink:

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13

thanks, I’ll check this video !! thanks

14

Skatter also take a look at this extension. So useful with large amounts of vegetation. It’s parametric as well so you can update or swap out components at any time.

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15

A copy of a component is never unique until you make it unique.

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16

thanks, I check this link. I have worked with skatter a little, but haven’t delved too deeply yet. Because each landscape in most of my files will have a lot of polygons due it being a district of a city or neighborhood, I plan to convert the 3 D trees to 2D png with “facing the camera” tool. I probably won’t use scatter, because I’m I want the new trees (replacement trees) to be installed in place of the old trees already installed from Placemaker (mindsight studio) another extension for downloading prefabed trees and buildings. The trees from placemaker are very generic though

17

thanks, I’ll keep working with the components category. I might have mistakened using the components tool properly. I know right clicking will have the components option and the default trey as well

18

It does matter. Groups are inherently unique, hence there is no “unique” option on right click with a group. Groups have no connection to other copy’s of instances within the model the way components do. If you start with a tree as a group all subsequent copy’s of that tree will be groups and all of them will be disconnected from each-other and unique. It sounds like that’s what you want.

If you have inherited a file that has nested components within it. Every component within must be disconnected to make the assembly not affect any other instances, so you would need to drill down making every component within unique. After doing that you have effectively made a new component called “tree2” that is disconnected from all previous existing “tree1” instances. But it is still a component, connected by design, so all fresh copies/instances of tree 2 will be connected to tree 2. If you want all the trees to be different make all the pieces into groups instead of components.

If you just want to make all the trees look different in your model so the forest is less uniform, consider applying a scale operation to each tree to change its height, width, and general shape. Scale operations applied to the outside to component containers do not affect other instances of the same component.

Also consider that applying multiple instances of a poly heavy 3D tree in mass will quickly grow into a bloated massive file that is difficult for your computer to calculate fast, you may begin to see lagging and slow response. Consider using 2d representations, or at least apply a tag to all trees that you can turn off when not needed.

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19

Thanks, there were groups containing many components within the group that I had to go through each one of the components( numerous with leaves and branches ) to convert to unique, which was a little time consuming. As I mentioned in the above paragraph, I will be changing the 3D trees to 2D png because there will be thousands of trees in my forest in addition to the hundreds of homes adding numerous edges and faces. Then applying the “face the camera” tool on the 2D png trees. So it will operate faster without freezing up. Are the 3 trees in the uploaded skp file (above) possible for changing to unique status?