Using the plant presets and flow animation, you can make plants grow up a column.

To animate a plant growing up a column

1. Select the column.
2. Create a curve that spirals around the surface as follows:
   • Make the column live.
   • Select the CV Curve Tool.
   • Click points on the column, tumbling the view to click points around the column.

   

3. Select the curve.
4. In the Visor, select a plant preset brush (for example, fern.mel in the plants folder).
5. Select Paint Effects > Curve Utilities > Attach Brush to Curves.
6. Select Display > Rendering > Stroke Display Quality > 75% to improve the wireframe display quality.
7. With the new stroke still selected, open the Attribute Editor and click the brush tab.
8. Modify the brush settings until you are satisfied:
   • Increase the Global Scale.
   • Under Tubes > Creation, increase the Tubes Per Step.

   

9. Press the 8 hotkey to switch to the Paint Effects panel and select Paint > Paint Scene.
10. Click the Redraw Paint Effects view icon on the toolbar to render the stroke.

    

11. Animate the growth as follows:
    • In the Attribute Editor, click the brush tab.
    • Expand Flow Animation.
    • Turn on Time Clip, then change the Flow Speed value. In this example, we used 1.0.
    • In the scene view, set the playback end time to 100 and click the Play Forward button.
    • Now in the Attribute Editor, turn on Stroke Time.
    • Go to the first frame and click the Play Forward button.
12. Render the animation. See Render a scene with Paint Effects strokes.