This serene, lush foliage was actually made with a Blender plugin

Achieving lush, plentiful foliage can be a challenge for both physical and virtual gardeners and creators. I've just transplanted a lemon tree that's promptly dropped most of its leaves and drooped almost to the ground, and my jasmines have been stripped by ants.

I feel for anyone trying to make whole forests in 3D modelling software for game design or visualisation projects. But this Blender plugin looks like it could provide some help. It procedurally generates foliage in minutes with enough detail to strand up to close examination.

Forest Generator tutorial: realistic procedural forests in blender - YouTube

Watch On

Forest Generator is a tool created by VFX artist Andreas Dürr AKA Cinematic Cookie. It allows the rapid creation of realistic procedural forests using Geometry Nodes in Blender.

There are currently four different biomes, allowing the creation of deciduous forest, jungle, bamboo and snow-covered forest, and there are plans to add more.

You can create a forest in seconds and control it with simple sliders. The tree models are detailed, with customisable subdivision levels, and you can use the delete zone to make space in the foliage for whatever you need. There are different resolution zones to optimise performance, with a low-poly forest version to fill out backgrounds and save computing power.

You can find out more and buy the plugin at Superhive, which also stocks a range of other forest generators. If only there was a solution this easy for my garden.

If you need software to run Blender better, see our pick of the best laptops for 3D modelling. And for 3D software news, check out the Maxon rebrand of apps like Cinema 4D and ZBrush.