Documentation

Installation

1. Download green_vine-1.6.2.zip. Do not unzip it.
2. In Blender go to Edit › Preferences › Get Extensions, open the menu in the top right corner and choose Install from Disk…
3. Select the zip. The add-on is enabled right away.
4. Open the sidebar in the 3D Viewport (N) and click the Green Vine tab.

Requires Blender 4.2 or newer. Tested in Blender 4.2, 4.5 and 5.2. The download is large (about 600 MB) because all 25 plants come with their full textures.

Adding a vine

1. Place the 3D cursor where the vine should grow from: on the soil of a pot, or on the surface of a wall.
2. In New Vine pick a plant from the thumbnails.
3. Click one of the three buttons:
   • Pot – stuck into a pot, the stems fall over the rim (U shape)
   • Wall – stuck into a wall facing the front view, the stems stick out and droop (L shape)
   • Free – the plant upright, as modelled

The vine is a normal mesh object with a Geometry Nodes modifier, so you can move, rotate, scale, duplicate and link it like any other object. Select it to see all its settings in the panel. Change next to the plant name swaps the plant and keeps all settings.

Gravity

The stems are bent by gravity, which follows the object's rotation. A vine rotated into a wall turns from a U into an L by itself, and every position in between works too. Moving a vine never recalculates it. After a rotation, the vine updates as soon as you stop turning it.

Viewport

• Full / Low / Dummy – what the viewport shows. Low uses low-poly leaves and stems, Dummy shows one flat card per leaf (fastest). Renders always use full geometry.
• All: Full / All: Dummy – switch every vine in the scene at once.
• Low-Poly Far From Camera (Render) and Distance – vines farther from the camera than this distance render with low-poly geometry. This saves memory in large scenes and is applied only while rendering, so moving the camera in the viewport stays fast.
• Show Stake – the short stake at the bottom of the plant. Turn it off when nothing hides it.
• Solver Steps – accuracy of the bending. The default 30 is enough; more steps are slower.

Shape

• Reaching / Arching / Hanging – quick presets, from stems reaching out sideways to stems hanging straight down.
• Droop – how much the stems give way to gravity. The stems keep their length, they never stretch when they bend.
• Lift – raises or lowers where the stems start.
• Width – how far the stems fan out to the sides.
• Spread Around – spreads the stems evenly around the plant, for a pot seen from all sides.
• Length – shortens the stems.
• Insert Depth – sinks the plant deeper into the pot or the wall. The buried part is hidden.
• Every Random slider next to a setting gives each plant or stem its own variation.

Pot and wall

• Pot Rim – stems rest on the rim of the pot and fall over it, instead of going through it.
• Box Around The Array – one rectangular planter around the whole array instead of a round pot per plant. Back rows reach over the front rows and bend at the edge of the planter.
• Radius / Margin – size of the pot opening, or the space between the outer plants and the planter wall.
• Rim Above Soil – height of the rim above the soil.
• Lie On Top At – how high above the rim the stems lie on the foliage before they fall over.
• Show Pot and Depth – an outline of the pot, visible in the viewport only. It helps to place your own pot model and never renders.
• Keep Off The Wall – no stem goes behind the wall the vine is stuck in.

Array

• Columns, Rows, Column Spacing, Row Spacing – many vines from one object.
• Position Random, Rotation, Tilt Random, Scale – per plant variation in the array.
• Gaps – randomly leaves out some plants.
• Seed and the refresh button – a new random arrangement.

Mixing plants

In Variants In The Mix add up to 10 plants to one array. Share sets how often each plant appears. The X button removes a plant from the mix.

Leaves

• Amount, Scale – fewer or smaller leaves.
• Turn To Light – leaves face upwards.
• Turn Random – a small random turn of every leaf.
• Avoid Collisions, Strength, Reach – leaves that overlap turn away from each other.

Color

• Hue Shift, Saturation, Brightness – change the colour of all leaves.
• Random Per Plant, Random Per Leaf – small colour differences between plants and between leaves.

Updating

After installing a new version, open an older .blend file, select a vine and click Update Vines if the panel asks for it. All settings are kept.