Forest Pack Pro Vs. MultiScatter

[Devin Johnston]

I already own MultiScatter and have been pretty happy with it but I keep seeing all the people using Forest Pack and I'm wondering if I'm missing out on something. I'd really like to hear from people that have used both programs and can give me a good read on which one is better. My main concerns are the speed of rendering and memory usage as well as viewport performance.

[Matt McDonald]

I can't answer your question directly as I've only used forest pack (and I like it). It would be nice if the multi-scatter people made a lite or trial version to compare the two.

[Chris MacDonald]

I've used both quite a lot, and we've just commited ourselves to 3 forest pro licences. It is fantastic.

 

Under the bonnet they both do much the same, however there are a couple of features you get with forest pro that you don't (or didn't when I last used it)with multiscatter, such as plant clustering, plant painting/scaling/transforms without needing a seperate plugin, and various falloffs involving height, angle/steepness of slopes, etc, the forest colour map is fantastic for adding variation in tree colours.

 

I can't sing its praises enough really.

[Trick]

I use both. Very important: FPP has far better and faster support and friendlier licensing (i.e. they still believe in honest people )

[notamondayfan]

I'm also a Forest Pro user, and it does everything I could want from it and have never had the need to look at Multiscatter.

 

As mentioned, the features are spot on, intuitive and easy to learn. The support in the forums is brilliant too if you do get stuck.

 

For RAM management, again this is brilliant, and it has it's own shader optimization, so that can speed up render times too, and for viewport performance, you can display the "forest" in several ways depending on what you need to see.

 

Dean

[cg_Butler]

I have been a VRayscatter and multiscatter user since they came out and thought multiscatter was the best thing since sliced bread when it came out. I had checked out Forest Pack Pro and even downloaded the lite version, used it, suggested my company get it but the licensing is a yearly cost which was off putting for them, especially as they would have ideally had to get a fair few licences.

 

I have moved on from there and now and use both. I'd say that now i have used forset pack pro, all be it only for a few months, it is much better all round. One bonus being the plant objects that come with it (multiscatter comes with none), and the fact you can add in xfrog libraries straight in to the software is a great perk.

 

I think I will now be using Forest Pack Pro for most things to do with foliage from now on.

 

It has floating licensing too, so you can get one licence and anyone can use it. Only one person can access it at a time though but the chances of everyone needing a licence at the same time is quite slim to none.

Edited August 16, 2013 by cg_Butler