I have a tree (mesh) created from the "Sapling Tree Gen". I am trying to populate hand crafted branches. I've tried Geometry Nodes and a Particle system with different problems. Both systems are using the same Weight map, where I painted the branches using edit mode selection and Assign to avoid putting branches directly on the trunk.
Geometry Nodes - I followed the node setup here:
GNs: Rotate Object Instances to fixed reference point 3.2.2
But as you can see the upper branches circled in red are at the wrong angle, pointing up and back into the tree. The lowest circle branch is the object I am distributing, it has it's origin at world origin and all scale/rotation is applied. How do I distribute nice looking branches on my weight map around the tree all facing down and away from the trunk?
Here is another view of the same:
Particle Systems - I have similar issues but instead of the leaves going up, they seem to go down:
I found this too, but it appears to be for a curve, which I no longer have:
Geometry Nodes: How to correctly rotate collection instances on complex geometry according to normals/tangent?