Okay. I parametrized the shader so billboards can receive per instance parameters. Here's the list of parameters:
- size (width/height)
- crown shape (upper vs lower circle ratio)
- trunk height
- trunk width
- flower density
- noise normal map frequency
- noise normal map strength
- and light/dark/flower color variation from gradient texture
There's potential for more but I must adhere to my anti-feature-creep policy 🙂
I also added some silhouette scraggling to somewhat mask out ugly stippling artefacts near the contour.
And last but not least - some classical trigonometric sway. It's computationally cheap and good looking, so why not have some. Each dot sways with its own period shift and the whole composite is additionally waved as a whole.
Here are some videos to show it all in motion. The quality/resolution is not the best, it's just a quick preview.
With this I officially announce the project finished!
For the time being 🙂