Modular Tree generates trees from a node graph, replacing hand-modelled branch structure. It differs from Blender’s built-in Sapling Tree Gen, where every control is a slider in one flat list: here trunk, branching, growth and foliage are separate nodes you wire together, so a tree is a setup you keep and vary rather than numbers you rediscover. This release is a maintained fork of Maxime Herpin’s original.
What It Does
- One-click presets for Oak, Pine, Willow and Random, if you want a tree before you want a node graph
- Node types for trunk, branches, growth, radius override and meshing, adjusted non-destructively
- Multi-level branching driven by L-system growth simulation with apical dominance
- Eight crown shapes — cylindrical, conical, spherical, flame and others — based on the Weber and Penn botanical model
- Procedural leaves generated with superformula maths and distributed through geometry nodes
- Per-branch control over seed, length, radius, gravity and attraction, split probability and phyllotaxis angle
- Pivot Painter 2.0 texture export for wind animation in Unreal Engine 5
Good To Know
- Free and open source — the add-on under GPL-3.0-or-later, its core library MIT. Credited to Brandyn-Britton, maintained by GoodPie, originally by Maxime Herpin
- Version 5.5.2, 3 to 4 MB depending on platform, with Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux builds. Asks for file export permission, used for Pivot Painter textures
- Blender 4.3.1 minimum, not 4.2 — higher than most extensions, so anyone parked on 4.2 LTS cannot run it
- 24,600+ downloads on Blender Extensions, rated 5.0 from 12 reviews
- The leaves are the weak point. Reviewers report they come out as planes, and swapping the leaf model means going into the node editor — there is no leaf picker in the panel
- No live update while you edit: you regenerate to see a change, which makes dialling in a tree slower than the node graph suggests
- Reviewers also report the add-on going missing after reopening a project and needing reinstalling, and trouble on Blender 5.1 tied to its Python version
- Documentation is thin — several reviews ask for tutorials, and the node interface is the commonest complaint from people arriving off Sapling
Where It Fits
This suits environment artists who need many varied trees from one setup and will spend an evening learning the graph; the Pivot Painter export makes it a genuine option for Unreal vegetation. If you need one good hero tree today, the preset-plus-node-editor route will cost you more time than a straightforward generator or a scanned asset. Check your Blender version before planning around it.