HOW CAN I CREATE A CHRISTMAS TREE IN BLENDER?
Karen Grifts, Oxford
This issue I will demonstrate how to create a Christmas tree in Blender. The creation process I’m going to show you is based on one of the most important internal add-ons for Blender. In order to use it we have to enable it from the Preferences panel; in the ‘Add-ons’ section we have to search and enable the Sapling Tree Generator. Press Shift+a and in Curve we can select the tree generator and start to set the parameters for the creation of the tree.
Open the Sapling Tree Generator in the bottom-left side of the 3D viewport. Here we have the main panel of the tree generator. In order to create a Christmas tree we have to select the Small Pine preset, then change the values of the scale, shape and branch distribution. We can now start to model the tree (you can set a new value for the Random Seed in order to change the base model of the tree). In the settings of the tree generator panel we can set many other parameters related to the body of the tree; the main element we need to set is the Branch Splitting. Going to the Branch Splitting settings we can see many different values, the most important setting here is the Levels of the branch – for this model I set it to 3.
Now we can enable and add the leaves to the tree by clicking Show Leaves in the Leaves settings. Here we can set the number of leaves, the geometry of the leaf and many other important parameters. In this case, I decided to keep the default values. The last things we need to create are the two materials for the leaves (simple green material) and the branches (I used a brown diffuse shader with some noises).
Now the tree is ready but we need to add some lights and decoration. Press Shift+a and select a sphere (or an icosphere in order to decrease the number of polygons). Select the tree, add a particle system, set the particle type to Hair and change the Render As value to Object. Here select the previously created model (the sphere or icosphere). Now select the main object of the instance and add an emission shader. Now the tree is full of lights! For the Christmas baubles you have to repeat the previous process, creating a new particle setting and changing the instance object. Select the baubles you created. Now press F12 and let’s take a look at the render!