Do you recomend Onyx Storm?

[Sergio]

Hello all,

I use 3DS Max9 and Vray. I was thinking to buy Onyx Storm or Onyx Garden,

 

Is it worth it? I made mistake last year buying Vue 5, $1000 invain and did not make one cent out of it, so this time I don't take pretty pictures for granted.

 

Can wind feature be rendered in Vray? I know theoretically, but in practice RAM is quite obstacle...

 

Looks like, it is quite tricky to make nice tree.

 

Regards

Srdjan

[Brian Smith]

It's the only 3D tree simulator i use and probably the only i will use for a long time. It's very easy to use, very flexible and overall the best solution as far as i'm concerned. of course, i haven't any of the new stuff

[Brian Smith]

just noticed your question about wind....pretty simple to do with onyx...you can use adaptive solutions like ir map and lc, as long as you do it careful. of course qmc is always a good solution for animated objects, and actually is not as bad as the other solution in ram consumption

[Rick Eloy]

And you can always render the animated trees in separate and comp them later. Onyx is, imho, the best tree solution around.

[Spacelord]

Hi Rick,

When you render Onyx trees in a separate pass.

How do you get the final gather to work properly,

you would miss out on final gather rays that buildings and ground etc, would occlude. Or do find the difference is negligible ?

[Rick Eloy]

Normally, the influence of the surrounding buildings is not really that important. I mean, trees are such complex geometries that you hardly see any bleed hitting them.

Anyway, I normally don't use animaed trees in my animations (few clients ask for it), and end up using VRayProxy trees, which are quite great.

[carlangas]

I'd recomend onyx as well. I've been using them for a few months now, they really improve ones renderings. The only thing is that when you show them plants real close to the camera they do look a little fake, they can look much better if you take the time to really texture them properly. I used onyx on these two scenes with the exception of the orange flowers and imho they look real nice.

[Spacelord]

Normally, the influence of the surrounding buildings is not really that important. I mean, trees are such complex geometries that you hardly see any bleed hitting them.

Anyway, I normally don't use animaed trees in my animations (few clients ask for it), and end up using VRayProxy trees, which are quite great.

Its not the bleeding I'm concerned about is more if a tree was up against a wall, then there wouldn't be much light hitting the tree from that side. I will have to give it a try, but doing passes in mental ray/3dsmax9 is pain, it was really easy in XSI.

 

Carlangas: those palms look good except for the uniform texture.

I find thats the biggest pain with ONYX trees is theres not textures,

a couple of leafs came with broadleaf but no barks.

[Sergio]

Hello guyz, great response, lots of good suggestions.

 

Onyx is the way to go, I am sure now.

 

I like the images, only crit is barks look bit fake and uniform, so custom materials will do the trick.

 

Only one question, if someone can explain to me, I am not sure how can I render separate passes?

 

Regards

Srdjan

[Rick Eloy]

Its not the bleeding I'm concerned about is more if a tree was up against a wall, then there wouldn't be much light hitting the tree from that side.

That's what matte/shadow is for. You can render the wall, for example, with 0 alpha contribution, so it would still affect the lighting and not the alpha, making it easier to crop the tree.

[Sergio]

Hello guys,

yesterday I bought OnyxGARDEN SuperBundle for Max9

 

learning is going to start very soon, so one thing, very important for me is, if somebody can explain please, how can I render in passes?

 

Regards

Srdjan

[Sketchrender]

It is a very good probably the best .

 

One Problem , when we updated to max 9.

You have to pay for an update for the plug in

and there was very little difference in the old version ....that is a rip off.

Why can't they all take a leaf out of vrays business plan.

 

phil

[Nic H]

Allright, sorry to bump this but im looking to get Onyx Gardensuite for the company I work for, for a large scale upcoming job that will involve alot of 3d planting, specifically using australian species ie. eucalyptus.

 

I have looked at the website but I cannot find if it exports 3D meshes only? ie I dont want to use any opcaity mapping due to the speed decrease. Can it generate 3d leaves in various shapes? I wouldnt like to have to model 20 differnt kinds of leaves for each tree.

 

I understand I will need to re-texture teh models but they allready have UVs applied according to the website which will be fine as I will be converting to vray proxies anyway.

 

What do people think of the broadleaf libary 'out of the box' is it good? The preview thubnails are very small.

 

The oher query i have is what kind of onyx plant do you use for dense ground cover? Like low native grasses, and bushy fill planting?

[Justin Hunt]

For the grass I have been trying the hair and Fur (Max's one not the vray one) and it does a great job, especially with clumping. I am trying to simulate the grass that grows on beaches. It is a little slow to render but worth it in the end.

 

I too am doing a project with alot of OZ native trees so any tips would be great.

 

JHV

[Nic H]

Yes there is a lack of quality Australian vegetation out there, large trees and dense ground cover in native species especially, landscape architects are very fussy aabout the planting generally and I often need to do very large tracts of it. I tried modelling a eucalyptus using edit polt and pflow but never finished it. Maybe soon and I can share it with the other guy doing the 3d tree.

 

It seems xfrog and onyx both heavily rely on opacity maps, but xfrog is more exopensive and looks to have good quality textures. Jeez I dont know, maybe pay someone to model up some specifically?

[vkiuru]

I find it difficult to control quality vs polycount with Onyx. My trees hit easily 500k polys before I'm satisfied with the amount of leaves. The manual is pretty big, yet I haven't had much success browsing it for the answer.

 

How are your polycounts with Onyx? I don't like the half-bare look of most trees I see in renders but 0,5mil polys for a tree is too much.. is this just me being too picky or can the polycount be decreased without giving an impression of "a dying tree"?

[Ernest Burden III]

polycount be decreased without giving an impression of "a dying tree"?

 

Bigger leaves.

 

 

Also, for background trees use the Onyx bounding shape option (I forget what they call it) and a texture map with alpha channel. That way you can afford more polys close-up.

 

Don't use the stems, or even the twigs, for most trees unless you will be right under it.

[vkiuru]

Thanks, those did help! The stems were a big factor.

[Geoffc]

Yes there is a lack of quality Australian vegetation out there, large trees and dense ground cover in native species especially, landscape architects are very fussy aabout the planting generally and I often need to do very large tracts of it. I tried modelling a eucalyptus using edit polt and pflow but never finished it. Maybe soon and I can share it with the other guy doing the 3d tree.

 

It seems xfrog and onyx both heavily rely on opacity maps, but xfrog is more exopensive and looks to have good quality textures. Jeez I dont know, maybe pay someone to model up some specifically?

 

Dont know if you found this yet, but here's a premade xfrog eucalyptus.

 

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/273516

 

I've actually had pretty good luck with xfrog plants, just heavy on polys once you start adding quite a few.