Vegitation Recommendation

[Scotters]

I am looking for a great vegetation application that can generate high-res scenes in Max. There seems to be two options: the Xfrog, Bionatics-type or exported trees from applications like Vue5.

 

Judging by the galleries, Bionatics looks good but is way too expensive. Xfrog is more reasonably priced but doing one tree at a time could take forever. RPC's don't hold up well in aerial fly-throughs and radiosity.

 

 

Any suggestions?

 

S.

[animart]

speed tree maybe?

or you can use world builder pro

[Devin Johnston]

I have Speed Tree 3 and so far I haven't been very impressed with it. The plug-in isn't integrated into Max very well and if you want to see what a tree looks like before it's inserted you have to use and external viewer. Once you've found the tree you have to write down it's name and then navigate to it through the plug-in to the folder it's in before inserting it into the scene. They’ve also had problems with the trees vibrating during animations but now they have a patch that is supposed to fix the problem. I'm also not very impressed with the level of detail on the trees; I would recommend downloading the free trial before buying it.

[ecastillor]

http://www.got3d.com just posted some 3d low poly trees...I havent tried them but they seem to work nicely and are not expensive

[lambros]

I guess that the lowpoly trees would be a nice low budget ($$$ and polygons) solution. If you want to invest more, the bionatics solution is a good one (yes they are quite expensive), or you could buy Vue 4 pro or Vue 5 infinite and export the trees as 3ds (but that could mean lots of polygons). I have seen Speedtree and I must admit that I really liked it, but about that animation artifact, I really don't know.

[pygoh]

what about Tree Storm Professional. I've used it for a few animations and worked well.

 

http://www.onyxtree.com/

[Scotters]

Thanks for your rapid replies – which is why I love this forum.

 

My vegetation question may be open-ended but making the commitment to a particular kind of vegetation software is similar to picking a 3d app. Years ago I was recommended Architrion…

 

To further qualify my question: quality more than cost, high polys but capable of handling numerous trees/bushes/grasses and photorealistic.

 

Lambros, have you ever used Vue 5? Do work in Max then export to Vue or is it the other way around?

[manta]

Quote :

 

To further qualify my question: quality more than cost, high polys but capable of handling numerous trees/bushes/grasses and photorealistic.

 

I use Onyx, and I think it was well worth the money, the only problem is the quality maybe too high, very high poly count, so you can't just throw 500 trees down and expect it to render, you run out of memory.

So they're great for close ups, but for arials it might be a problem.

The intergration with max is great, it has its own wind system, you just check on, and set the wind speed and direction, looks really cool.

So the moral of the story is you can create a scene with high photrealism, but will it render...

[omar]

don.t go RPC It Really look so Plastic

[skana]

Take a look at Bionatics. The prices have dropped considerably for EASYnat and they are having a great promotion until Feb. 28th for natFX! For what you get this is the most economical, as well as the most realistic...