Buntwald: Golden forest, planted in three clicks

Oct 13

5 min read

Pick a real tree, click the canvas three times, then give each stand enough spread and variation that it stops looking copy-pasted.

Eighteen low-poly trees across a landscape print: pointed gold silver firs in groups on the left and right, three round orange beeches in front of them in the middle, dark teal ground below and a sky fading from dark teal at the top to lighter teal at the horizon

Silver firs and beeches under a night sky: 18 trees from three clicks, downloaded from Buntwald as the free A5 print file (2480 × 1748 px) and cropped here to the trees.

Every tree in that picture started as a real one: a silver fir that grew to 20 metres with open space around it, and a European beech of 15 metres. Both come from The Grove, a simulator that grows trees branch by branch. I generated 858 renders of its trees with my own automation while building a catalogue of 3D trees: eleven species at up to five heights and three levels of crowding. Buntwald, German for "colourful forest", turns each render into flat, faceted shapes you can plant.

Below is how this forest got from an empty canvas to the print above: one tree chosen, three clicks, one card per stand and a night sky. Open this sky and ground and plant along. The link carries the sky, the ground and the horizon; the stands are the part you plant.

How this one got made

The fir is finished before it is planted

In the controls, open Tree and set Species to Silver Fir, Competition to Open-grown and Height to 20 m. In Colours, set Crown to gold (#ffb703) and Trunk and Branches to orange (#fb8500), two colours from the Golden Autumn Twilight palette. The main window draws that one tree four ways at once.

The same silver fir drawn four ways in gold and orange: faceted Low-poly, a flat Silhouette, Rings drawn as nested pen outlines, and square Pixel blocks

One silver fir, four styles, all following the same controls. Rings is the only one without fill: a pen traces each crown clump and the rings inside it.

I put the four styles side by side, with no switcher, because several controls show their effect in only one style: the pen settings only in Rings, the crown facets only in Low-poly. A switcher hid three of the four answers behind a click. Finish the tree here, because a stand keeps the tree it was planted with.

Three clicks make three lonely giants

Click the canvas left of centre, then right of centre: two firs. Switch Species to European Beech at 15 m, set its Crown to orange and its Trunk and Branches to gold, and click in the middle, a little lower. The first result is three full-size trees in a row, the beech crowding both firs. It reads as three specimens more than a forest.

Animation on a pale green canvas: one gold fir appears on the left, a second on the right, a large orange beech between them, then each stand multiplies into a group of smaller trees until there is a forest

Three clicks, then three cards. Each click plants one tree; the forest only appears once each stand's card gives it a count, a size and a spread. A five-second loop.

Each stand gets a crowd, and the crowd gets variation

Every click plants a stand, and every stand gets its own card under the canvas. Set the left firs to Tree count 7 at Base size 0.55, the right ones to 8 at 0.60, and the beeches to 3 at 0.42, so the round crowns sit in front of the firs instead of on top of them.

A Buntwald stand card: the line Silver Fir, Open-grown, 20 m, 7 trees, a reroll and a remove button, a Low-poly style selector, and sliders for Tree count, Base size, Horizontal range, Vertical range, Height variation, Mirror chance and Colour variation

The card for the left stand. Everything on it changes this stand only; the controls shape the next tree you plant.

A count on its own is not enough. Seven trees with no spread stand on one spot. Horizontal range scatters them sideways, and Height variation, Mirror chance and Colour variation make each tree a little different from its neighbour.

Three versions of the same stand of six gold firs: stacked on one spot so they read as a single tree, spread out as identical copies, and spread out with different heights, some mirrored, in slightly different golds

The same six firs three times. Left: no range, one spot. Middle: Horizontal range 0.40, six identical copies. Right: Height variation 30, Mirror chance 50 and Colour variation 30, and the copies become a group.

Each stand is seeded, so it keeps exactly this arrangement until you press its reroll button. I built it that way so a stand is an object you can come back to, and so moving one slider never reshuffles the whole forest.

Facet size decides how much of the real tree survives

This forest keeps the default facets: 8 for the firs, 14 for the beeches. Facet size, under Crown abstraction, is where to go if the crowns look too busy or too plain.

Four panels of the same beech: the green Grove render, then the orange low-poly crown at Facet size 4, 14 and 40, the facets growing from fine grain to a few big triangles

One beech from the Grove render to three facet sizes. At 4 the crown keeps the render's ragged edge; at 40 it is a handful of triangles; 14 is the default. Rendered with the app's own pipeline.

The facets are Delaunay triangles, which keep every triangle as wide as the points allow, so the crown breaks into chunky planes.

A night sky makes the gold read

On the default pale green canvas the gold and orange trees have nothing to stand out against. Open Colours, turn on Gradient background, and set Background (top) to dark teal (#023047) and Background (bottom) to a lighter teal (#219ebc). In Horizon, turn on Fill below horizon (ground) and set Horizon position to 0.82, Relief to 0.03, Relief detail to 9 and Horizon thickness to 3. Back in Colours, make the Horizon colour gold and the Ground dark teal.

The same forest twice: on the left on the default pale green canvas with a thin beige horizon line, on the right under a dark-to-light teal sky with dark teal ground and a thin gold line along the ridge

Same stands, two scenes. The trees did not change; against the dark sky and ground the gold crowns become the lightest thing in the picture.

The ridge stays straight between its corners. I kept it that way so the ground reads as the same hard-edged material as the trees.

From screen to object

Under Downloads, tick the licence box first. Then:

PNG (A5, 300 dpi) is the whole scene at 2480 × 1748 pixels, ready to print at A5.
SVG (outline) keeps only the crown outlines and the main branches, sized for Scribe and Hello My Name Is.

The Buntwald Downloads section: two full-width buttons, PNG (A5, 300 dpi) and SVG (outline), then Sources and credits and Order a print of this creation

What a visitor gets once the licence box is ticked: one print file and one line drawing.

Save project (.zip) sits with the controls, in the Project group. It holds every stand and backdrop, so the forest can be reopened here later with Load project (.zip). If a forest turns out well, Order a print of this creation sends it off to be printed.

Other controls, one line each

Wood abstraction: how thick the trunk and branches are, how they taper, and how many segments a branch keeps.
Rings pen: how many laps the pen makes in the Rings style and how far each lap wanders.
Canvas & backdrop: Landscape or Portrait, and a Poly Peaks SVG as a mountain range behind the trees.
Add trees, at the bottom of Tree: a tree pack from Overstory, for this visit only.

Your turn

Open this sky and ground, plant three stands and change one thing: a Rings stand behind the firs, or a birch where the beeches are. Then send me what you made. I'll ask before I show it anywhere.

Next, a forest like this one loses its colour and gets scratched into lines: Scribe a forest.

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