What is Verdant?
Digital Element's Verdant is a powerful, and unique new Photoshop plug-in which allows you to add realistic 3D rendered plant images to an image.

Learning Verdant
Learning Verdant couldn't be simpler. Verdant comes with a 17 page PDF manual, though it really only takes about 10 minuets of experimentation to figure out the majority of the features.

Working with Verdant
Verdant is an Adobe Photoshop plug-in. It is activated by making a selection on your Photoshop layer, and selecting 'Digital Element > Verdant from the filter menu.

The first place to start in Verdant is with the Presets. There are 35 preset trees to choose from as follows, 4-Oak, 4 Maple, 4 Pine, 4 Weeping Willows, 4 Palms, 4 Large Bushes, 4 small bushes, 4 young fir trees, 4 old fir trees, and 1 bonsai oak. Double clicking on any of these preset trees will display the selected tree in the viewport.

PreSets

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Depending on the type of plant you've selected, you'll be presented with a wealth of adjustable parameters specific to this species. These controls allow you to produce an infinite variety of trees, and plants.

Oak Parameters

Fir Tree

Verdant also gives you one more method for developing unique trees. The Variation wizard starts with a single tree, and using the variation rate, and the selected parameters, will auto-randomly create 8 variations to choose from.

The cool thing about Verdant is that these trees are all 3D mathematical models. This gives you full control, through the manipulation control panel to rotate, move, and scale your tree in 3 dimensions. This provided the flexibility to merge your trees into virtually any image, regardless of the angle of the original photo.

Manipulation Controls

This panel also contains the preview rendering options. The choices are wireframe, Preview Rendering, or Production rendering. These settings affect the quality, and speed of the rendering in the preview window. A tree with a high level of detail is still manageable for real-time feedback by selecting wireframe, and in less detailed trees preview rendering. Production rendering takes some time, but gives you a view of exactly what the image will look like, before committing to rendering into your Photoshop layer.

Also on the manipulation control panel, are the "Single Tree" or "Groups Mode". This determines whether you are adding a single tree to your layer, or a group of trees.

Groups Mode

In Groups mode, Verdant will grown an entire forest for you. The number of trees (up to 100), and spacing is adjustable via sliders. The pattern of disbursment is selectable from either the included patterns, or from your own provided bitmap template.

Lights

Since the trees in Verdant are all 3D, you are also able to control how they are illuminated. The lights panel provide the controls to manipulate the angle, color, and intensity of a single or multiple light sources. Enabling shadows accesses the controls to vary the intensity, and quality of the shadow thrown by your trees. There is also an ambient color, and light setting which affects the overall lighting of the scene.

Conclusion