Thank you for purchasing Tree Druid, the botanical wizard. Although we have made every effort to make Tree Druid intuitive and easy to use, this User Guide is designed to help you get the most out of Tree Druid.

Tree Druid is a Carrara extension that allows you to create a variety of botanical trees, from tiny bonsai trees to colorful maples. More precisely, Tree Druid is a procedural modeller that generates and animates a three dimensional Carrara primitive representation of a botanical tree.

A botanical tree is composed of branches and leaves (shown in green). Branches are the woody parts of the tree such as the trunk, the roots, the main stem, the boughs, and the limbs. The roots connect the tree via the trunk to the ground. The main stem (shown in black) is the continuation of the trunk. The boughs (shown in red) are offshoots (children) of the main stem. The limbs (shown in blue) are offshoots of the boughs. Offshoots of limbs are also called limbs.

Another way to look at the tree is that it is composed of a trunk and a crown. The trunk includes the roots and ends where the main stem and boughs begin. The crown is everything above the trunk (main stem, boughs, limbs, and leaves).

The remainder of this User Guide reflects the nature of two different types of users: the ones who learn a tool in a systematic fashion and those who jump right in and only refer to a manual only when needed.

The tutorials step the first group of users through the creation of an animated tree, such as a maple tree blowing in the wind. For the second type of user, the Reference Manual describes each of the Tree Druid features in detail.

This User Guide assumes that you are familiar with Carrara.

Finally, we want to continually improve Tree Druid, so we would like to hear from you. Please send us your comments and show us what you have done and what you would like to do with this unique tool. We will try to incorporate your suggestions into future versions and to feature the best work done with Tree Druid on our website.