mbr Posted June 21, 2004 Share Posted June 21, 2004 I was hoping some people wouldn't mind posting some examples of trees made with plugins, explanations on the process, opinions, etc. There are a bunch, but no one (to my knowledge) has compared them head to head. The things I am personally most concerned with: 1. Realism 2. Cost (both for the plugin and the models afterwards) 3 Flexibility - the ability to control the poly count, how hard it is to do so, etc. 4. Rendering with animations And anything else anyone can think of. The ones that come to mind are: RPC, Bionatics, XFrog, and SpeedTree. Thanks, I think a lot of people would like to see images next to eachother. I would have posted it in the Max forum, but most are available for several platforms. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted June 21, 2004 Share Posted June 21, 2004 This would be most useful. I have never used any of them, and am not sure what I will do when I face up to needing better trees... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Johnson Posted June 21, 2004 Share Posted June 21, 2004 In my view, I think it is time for a in-depth comparison of the 4 different competing products for tree's / shrubs. I'm not talking about a 4 page review, but a scientific comparison. That is rendering time per polygon per shrub. Setup time per polygon per shrub. Also getting expert users of each tool to populate an identical scene and to explain what they feel is the strength's and weakness's of their tool. Then to get someone else to comment on the similarities and differences of each plugin. Also to get the review of 4 BRAND NEW users and their experience with of the 4 competing tools. User A says "I learned Speedtree well, but in the end it didn't do what I want; Whereas XFrog was hard to learn, but in the end it did what I want. etc.." User B says "SpeedTree was hard to use, but it did what I wanted; Whereas Xfrog's viewport tumble tool stunk and I'll never use that again. etc.." User C etc.. I'm talking charts, graphs etc.. That's what I'd like to see. Chris J. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muzzy Posted June 21, 2004 Share Posted June 21, 2004 Have you read those ? http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/Reviews/Review011_1.asp http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/Reviews/Review023_1.asp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbr Posted June 21, 2004 Author Share Posted June 21, 2004 Yup, read those. But that's not a comparison between all of them. Also, they are missing the most important aspect to me: quality. Without seeing great, final renders, I have no idea how it will look. The Bionatics website doesn't help matters, either, as there are no really good renders, so their products look bad. I believe SpeedTree is worse, but could be wrong. RPC doens't do a great job, but there is at least some diversity. XFrog's site show more images, and close ups of the bundles (and they are dirt cheap compared to the others!). I've bought XFrog models, and they are truly superb. That's the direction I lean, especially after that review, but I'd like to see examples of very good work, opinions of those that use them, etc. It's a little surprising that since Bionatics comes free with max 6 (I've yet to upgrade from 5.1), you think there would be a lot of renderings poping up with their trees, but I haven't seen any. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xgarcia Posted June 21, 2004 Share Posted June 21, 2004 haven't posted in quite a long time... I used to frequent the VRay forums and saw quite a bit of vegetation plugins being used....take a look around the images category...some stuff there is great. hey Markus....How's Denver?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dollus Posted June 21, 2004 Share Posted June 21, 2004 Ernest: You might want to look at http://www.gardenhose.com It is used with Painter to create some great trees. Their online gallery is a bit weak. The software is quite capable of more. Note: not a push-button solution nor for the faint of wrist, but I'm sure you would be up to the task Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbr Posted June 21, 2004 Author Share Posted June 21, 2004 Xavier, How are you man? Long time! Things have been great here, non stop work. No time for the fun stuff that got me out here in the first place, though. How about yourself? There is some nice work on the VRay forums. I am a Final Render user, so it doesn't help me too much. The one thread I found that had nice plants were all made in house! I would like to buy one of these packages sometime soon. If you saw any particular ones that people mention the software, I'd love to read it. Cheers, and drop a line sometime! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omar Posted June 22, 2004 Share Posted June 22, 2004 I guss the question shold be poly tree VS bitmaps tree and I think you can use both poly for forground and bitmaps for bacground Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Johnson Posted July 2, 2004 Share Posted July 2, 2004 It's a little surprising that since Bionatics comes free with max 6 (I've yet to upgrade from 5.1), you think there would be a lot of renderings poping up with their trees, but I haven't seen any. Huh? Since when is it in Max6? Please explain!! Chris J. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now