Fractal Tree Generator
A recursive tree grown from four numbers: depth, branch angle, shrink ratio, and jitter. Shuffle reseeds the randomness; the SVG is yours.
Local onlyEverything on this page — the preview, the randomness, and every file you download — is generated by JavaScript in this tab. Nothing you type, pick, or upload is transmitted, and the page keeps working offline.
A fractal tree is recursion you can see: one trunk splits into two branches, each branch splits again, and the same rule repeated eight or ten times produces something unmistakably organic. This generator draws that construction live. Depth sets how many times the rule runs, branch angle sets how wide each fork opens, shrink ratio sets how much shorter each generation gets, and jitter adds seeded randomness to every fork so the tree stops being a perfect mathematical fan and starts looking grown.
The stroke tapers and the color shifts from your trunk color to your tip color as the generations climb, which is what makes the silhouette read as a tree rather than a diagram. Every shuffle grows a genuinely different tree from the same settings. The export is a compact SVG — branches are grouped by generation into a handful of paths, not thousands of elements — so it drops cleanly into design tools, posters, and hero sections.
Questions this tool gets asked
What is a fractal tree?
A shape built by applying one branching rule recursively: draw a segment, split into two shorter segments at an angle, and repeat on each new segment. After enough generations the result resembles a real tree — one of the simplest demonstrations that repeating a trivial rule produces organic complexity.
How do the sliders change the tree?
Depth is the number of branching generations — each step roughly doubles the branches. Branch angle is how wide each fork opens: small angles give tall cypresses, wide angles give spreading oaks. Shrink ratio is how much shorter each generation gets — higher values give lusher, denser crowns. Jitter randomizes every fork's angle so the tree looks grown instead of plotted.
Why does Shuffle change the tree but the sliders don't reset it?
The randomness comes from a seed. Sliders reshape the current seed's tree live, so you can tune a tree you like without losing it. Shuffle rolls a new seed — a different tree with the same settings. Download anything you want to keep before shuffling.
Is the SVG export usable in design tools?
Yes. The tree is a few grouped paths with plain stroke attributes — no filters, no scripts — so it opens and edits cleanly in Figma, Illustrator, and Inkscape, and inlines directly into HTML. The PNG export renders at 960×960 for anything that only takes rasters.
What are fractal trees used for?
Nature-themed posters and hero art, generative-art studies, logos and marks with an organic feel, and teaching recursion — this page is a live demonstration of a recursive algorithm. Because the output is SVG, it scales to any size without losing sharpness.
Is this fractal tree generator free and private?
Free, no signup, no watermark, ad-supported. The recursion runs in this tab and both exports are assembled locally — nothing you grow here is uploaded anywhere.