There are a slew of apps that will get you some nice looking and highly detailed trees. SpeedTree is arguably the most popular, but there are others. So why would you want to build your own Houdini tree? For the learning experience of course.
What can be more fun that trying to replicate natures complexity in shape and repeating patterns that can be seen recursively in a pine tree? Maybe three other things can be more fun… but it’s right up there.
Rohan Dalvi has us dive into a tutorial that shows how you can create a Houdini tree, of the timely holiday variety. This is done using copy and copy stamp in Houdini. Copy Stamp lets you push data upstream to the connecting operator inputs. Normally in Houdini, geometry data will flow through a surface network downward. Stamping can affect parameters on an upstream node.