Brian Cassil Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 So I might be the last person alive to incorporate onyx trees into my workflow but better late than never I guess. My question is if I get the Superbundle which includes all the plant creators and tree storm (which allows me to create/customise these trees and plants inside max... right?), can others who I work with then take the plants in .onx format and place them, add modifiers to them, scale them, etc., if they have the onyx2max plugin? Or would they need the whole treestorm program to do these sorts of modifications? What about network rendering? Is there some sort of free plugin that can be installed on the render nodes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianKitts Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 For the network rendering part, all you have to do is make sure you copy the plugin files off your working machine on to any of the rendernodes. (check your pm inbox) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted January 12, 2009 Author Share Posted January 12, 2009 Thanks Brian. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chapmandu Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 My question is if I get the Superbundle which includes all the plant creators and tree storm (which allows me to create/customise these trees and plants inside max... right?), can others who I work with then take the plants in .onx format and place them, add modifiers to them, scale them, etc., if they have the onyx2max plugin? Or would they need the whole treestorm program to do these sorts of modifications? I'm a little confused as to what the difference is between Tree Storm and Onyx2Max. I have been running with Tree Storm for a while now, so I'm pretty familiar with the interface, and based on the description of Onyx2Max on the Onyx web site, I don't see the difference - other then the new file format (.onx). .onx is new (I think) - Tree Storm uses the various different types of files (.bro, .con, .pal etc.) depending upon which type of tree content you are trying to load. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trick Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 With the latest releases I use the ONX format to import everything into Max. It's more stable and supports the output from ALL the generators. Until now I have been using either 3ds (which has the 65k limit) or LWO (with Polytrans and maps applied in Lightwave) to import, which is not exactly the smoothest way. If you need animated trees the TreeStorm plugin can be of great help, but otherwise it crashes on me a lot when importing or generating large (+1M poly) trees... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chapmandu Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 Which output doesn't Tree Storm support? As far as I know, it supports all of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianKitts Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 (edited) It's never supported bamboo. Personally I've never had a problem with treestorm. I used it with no problem in 2008, I just got the upgrade for 2009 purchase cleared through IT this morning so I'm looking forward to playing around with the new grass plug once I get the license files from onyx. Edited January 13, 2009 by BrianKitts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chapmandu Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 Ah, I see that now. I have never used the bamboo before, so I never noticed. Now that I'm looking at it, it doesn't seem to support the flower module either. I'm guessing it won't support the grass module either - you'll need Onyx2Max for that as well? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chapmandu Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 I sent an email directly to Onyx on this, and the response I got was, that if you upgrade your OnyxGARDEN Superbundle to the latest version, (version 2), it includes new versions of all of the modelers. All of these new modelers export .onx files. So, to summarize, the upgrade to OnyxGARDEN Superbundle includes new versions for all of the existing modelers, plus TreeStorm, and the new OnyxGrass modeler, and Onyx2Max plugin. Cost of the superbundle upgrade is $245.00 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianKitts Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 Just got my license files this morning to get the new package up and loaded. I was looking through the documentation about the Onyx2Max plugin and it sounds like it's the first step to a tool that will be more useful in the future. The file format will be able to transfer textures applied to the foligage objects which TreeStorm currently can't do. You have to add your textures after you bring in the objects with TreeStorm. Unfortunately the only standalone application that makes full use of the the onyx2max format is the new grass modeler. The rest of them will be given the functionality in future releases. The following is the actual documentation that comes with the plugin. What is ONX file? ONX file is a proprietary Onyx Computing 3D file format we have developed to suit the needs of our modelers. At this time, the only 3D rendering and animation package that reads ONX files is 3d Studio Max via Onyx2Max plugin. The advantages of importing our vegetation to Max as ONX files are immense. Besides carrying 3D geometry and UV mapping coordinates, ONX file stores color-per-vertex data and material data including the textures. And, it goes without saying that ONX file is not limited to 64k vertices and/or faces per sub-material as is the case with 3DS whose 64k limit will result in any number of split sub-materials for large objects which will make these objects cumbersome and time consuming to manipulate. Currently, the only Onyx modeler that supports all the features of ONX file format is OnyxGRASS. So, when importing grasses to Max, ONX file will deliver render ready 3D objects. The other Onyx modelers, i.e. OnyxTREE Broadleaf, OnyxTREE Conifer, OnyxPALM, OnyxBAMBOO, and OnyxFLOWER, do not export textures and material attributes because the software does not allow you to set these parameters. However, ONX export in these modelers allows you to take the full advantage of their color-pervertex feature because ONX files will carry color-per-vertex data into Max. We plan to implement full material ONX support in the future releases of all our modelers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chapmandu Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 I see. Of all of the Onyx content that I have created and brought over to max, I've never used the default vertex color map that the leaves come in with. I've always remapped them with a different type of procedural map, or an actual leaf bitmap. I never realized that when changing the colors of the leaves in the modelers, when brought into Max via TreeStorm, the vertex colors DO NOT reflect those changes. So obviously, that would be an enhancement, as well as the ability to do the bitmap texturing in the modeler (I suppose), verses doing it in Max. It's to bad they weren't able to add that flexibility in all of there modelers for this release, verses just the OnyxGrass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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