I was exploring Sketchup's extension warehouse last night and found two new extensions I hadn't seen before that might be useful to some people. They both have to do with the automatic creation of trees.

RP TREEMAKER is a free extension that creates trees in 2 dimensions. In the sketchup environment they will always face the camera , so they don't look flat. I guess in order to use them in Muvizu you'd export them as 2d graphics and put them on a backdrop?

A more interesting and useful extension is called 3D TREE MAKER, and it does exactly what the name says. You can pick a type of tree from a menu, change some parameters, and get a different 3D tree every time you generate! This one isn't free, although the price is pretty low. I guess you'd have to ask what your time is worth. I think it costs something like 10 bucks... you get 30 days free use to try it, but the list of tree types only has one entry unless you pay up.

the good: yep, it's a 3D tree...with individual leaves! (as opposed to a plane with an alpha graphic of leaves painted on it)

the bad: all those individual elements take up resources.

It can also generate grass, bushes etc... pretty cool!
edited by PatMarrNC on 01/06/2016