When nature calls

[voltron7]

Well, version 9

[Davy]

...don't know if we can go that far as it all depends on 3ds Max SDK and backwards issues

[rhino]

Does the presale version come with any plant species or is it just the tools with libraries of plants to follow? It's not very clear on the website.

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

its not only absolutely unclear, its also very vague..its like buying a rabbit in a sack!

sorry if this sounds bit offending but what progress has there been made on the site since it first appeared in this thread? any new info? ny new pics? NOPE....lots of talk only......kinda wondering how this thread could make it to the page NO 10 ...there are topics that deserve this sort of attention far more!

in my opinion, the presale came too early .....the customers shoudl know what they re buying.....might as well be a HOAX! (i dont mean this really but one never knows
until i see some progress, new images, customer opinions, i am not bothered to spend a penny on this.

did not want to offed anyone, dont want to be rude, just expressing my opinion

hopefully the emecs guys will soon come up with something more concrete which will take our breaths away....i will gladly apologize should anyone be offended!

best regards

[Morne]

jip, "coming soon" has already been coming from last year this time. Just take a look at the date of the 1st post. I agree with the presale being too soon. Also I would say even mentioning the product was too soon.

[trick]

its not only absolutely unclear, its also very vague..its like buying a rabbit in a sack...

Since the first message in this thread I have not seen any new images which show any progress with this product. It looks like they have been working on their shop and licensing system for a whole year. They should release some tutorial/technical videos to show how this product actually works: looking at all the interfaces just makes things more complicated instead of impressing ! I'm really impressed by the quality of the images, but these could easily been made with existing plugins, if not without any plugins at all. So this new product is more about the easy of building ecosystems and this can only be shown with demo-movies...

[Davy]

Criticism accepted.

MDO Plants is a set of 5 plugins and a basic plant library set.
The basic plant library set includes 20 different species including grass, flowers and trees.

The plugins are:
1 Library - an easy way to organize models
2 Areas - easy way to create areas on a landscape or any kind of surface object
3 WacoSystems - advanced system to create detailed ecosystems
4 WacoScatter - advanced options to create object distribution with ease
5 WacoPlants - customize and animate plants, including wind, gravity and so on

Pre-release includes first 4 plugins. These plugins can work with any third party plant and objects models.

WacoPlants and the basic plant library set come later and people that are buying current pre-release will get them as well.

More plant sets will be available for sale later.

Pre-release is already a powerful set of tools for advanced object distribution and creating sophisticated ecology systems, as well as a model organising system. These tools do not require our own objects but instead can work with any third party models.

We made this pre-release available, so peole that need advanced scatter systems that works seamlessly with VRay, can start using it.
People that need the advanced plant models, will need to be a bit more patience and wait for our future releases.

Demo movies are on the way to clear up what is vague right now.

Davy

[trick]

Simply said: in the end you get an advanced scatterer (which does scattering/animation only and offers no extra optimisations for rendering inside VRay memorywise) for which you pay 199 in the first year and 99 or more for subsequent years. You will get some plants as a bonus, but still need to buy extra libraries or use your own plants !

Now show me why the first 4 plugins are better then Forest Pro, VRayScatter or GroundWiz !

It was once said that licensing would be unique in terms of portability and usability. Could you please explain since I don't see any advantages over the other systems ?

[davision]

Well, I'm not Davy and don't work for his company -- but I will come to the plugin's defense since I find some of the criticism here unfair and unwarranted.

I haven't used Forest Pro, Vray Scatter or Groundwiz... but they all seem to have serious limitations. MDO Plants when completed will be 5 plugins, not four -- so why would you make an incomplete comparison (as in "show me why the first 4 plugins are better than Forest Pro...")? It's especially strange to make such a comparison since the fifth plugin within this package will probably be the most significant and distinguishing feature.

This is a Presales period -- which in my mind, means BETA. You're buying an unfinished product if you purchase now, so it does not seem fair to complain.

My only criticism thus far is that the Presales page should state clearly that the "Plants part" (meaning WacoPlants) of MDO Plants is not yet included. It's a little weird to buy MDO Plants right now but not get any plants. But since I bought my license knowing it's "presales", it would be unreasonable to bang that drum too loudly.

As for what is already included, I haven't really tested it yet, but it looks like a very sophisticated scattering system -- and it will work with Vray Proxies supposedly, so there are memory optimizations in that sense, right? Also the library function looks quite sophisticated to allow you to populate your scene with existing objects (from other MAX files) easily, and I don't know that those other plugins offer that, do they?

Lastly, the licensing system sounds absolutely excellent. You can activate or deactivate a single workstation at any time. If you have multiple animators, you can share the license freely among them just so long as only one person is using it at any one time (the other users can have the plugins active, they just can't modify the settings without the license). Evidently, you can manage the license online or with a local server (after presales is over). I believe there is also some type of emergency 'day license' for licensing a computer if there is ever a problem. (I don't know much about this aspect). Also, the license continues to work past the expiration date. You just won't get updates.

All of these features of the licensing are ideal -- and much better than having to email some random person an unlock code every time you change computers or upgrade your system. If I'm under a deadline and I need a license fast, I hate dealing with the inflexible licensing systems I've seen used by other software makers. I give EmecStudios credit for coming up with a reasonable, flexible and forgiving system. Also, I should mention that I've emailed them several questions before and after my purchase and they have been very prompt and thorough in their responses... much like Chaos Group actually.

My point is -- if you don't want to buy the presales version then don't. If you want to make comparisons and layer on the criticism at least wait until you have all the facts and preferably wait until the product is officially released.

[trick]

...I haven't used Forest Pro, Vray Scatter or Groundwiz... but they all seem to have serious limitations. MDO Plants when completed will be 5 plugins, not four -- so why would you make an incomplete comparison (as in "show me why the first 4 plugins are better than Forest Pro...")? It's especially strange to make such a comparison since the fifth plugin within this package will probably be the most significant and distinguishing feature....

I'm using ALL mentioned plugins and because these are all scatter-tools with more or less added or missing features, it is exactly why I would like info about the first 4 plugins, since these are the ones that are "offered" at the moment. Of course the fifth plugin will make the difference, but it could be a long time before this one will get live...who knows?

If my replies sounded too much like critisism, it was not meant to. It's more that I missing too much information to make a purchase. Next to that: I'm following this thread now for a year and I more or less expected a finished product. Putting this thing as a presales beta (which I can/will not use in production) disappoints me somewhat !

About the licensing: Can a single person activate the license at home while rendering is done in another location (work) ? Like a one man company having an office with renderfarm and a workstation at home ?

...and it will work with Vray Proxies supposedly, so there are memory optimizations in that sense, right...

This goes for ALL mentioned plugins ! Problems start when porting huge (millions) numbers of instances (read instance locations) from Max to the renderer !!

[davision]

About the licensing: Can a single person activate the license at home while rendering is done in another location (work) ? Like a one man company having an office with renderfarm and a workstation at home ?

Well Davy would have to give the final answer but my understanding is that 'yes' you can do this. The render farm should work fine with unactivated copies of the plugin. You only need an active license to manipulate Waco settings. Again, this is only a guess based on what Davy described to me in an email -- I haven't verified it.

[Davy]

You will get some plants as a bonus, but still need to buy extra libraries or use your own plants !
Now show me why the first 4 plugins are better then Forest Pro, VRayScatter or GroundWiz !

If you want to compare MDO Plants with existing plugins, you have to compare everything.
The upcoming demo movies will show the differences.
If we would stop at these 4 plugins, you already have things to consider why MDO Plants could be better than your existing plugins.
Adding WacoPlants makes it even more convincing. Maybe you don't see much yet but the animation clearly shows things are possible that haven't been before.

If you want to compare MDO Plants with Onyxtree and expect modelers with full library content seeing the 4 plugins (other than WacoPlants) as a bonus, you still get a lot value for money.

We may offer WacoPlants with more species as a separate product. This way it'll include only individual plants manipulation (like changing geometry) and animation (wind, gravity etc). WacoPlants works only with the plants from Emecstudios library. Do you think it'll be a more interesting product for you rather than the whole thing that includes all the scattering and ecology functionality, as well as model organising in one package, but has only basic plants included.

It was once said that licensing would be unique in terms of portability and usability. Could you please explain since I don't see any advantages over the other systems ?

It is unique, you can manage your license on the fly, activate and deactivate your workstation. Install on as many workstation as you need.
Without an activation, it all loads and renders but you can't edit.
On top, we offer day licenses for situations where you forgot to deactivate at work and need to continue at home (or any other situation like hardware change, crash etc).
We offer render farm deployment where you can keep your nodes updated with your main workstation when installing updates.

Everything is a single click command.

Presales is indeed final beta but we are not in a rush to turn your beta license into a final license so again you will experience we want to give value for money.

We understand it might be too soon for one person but we shouldn't wait for the other person who do wants to get started.

As experienced on this board (not VRay related)...getting no reply, waiting for email activations, reactivating and slow support...we consider being prompt and helpful as extra value as well.

Davy

[Davy]

I'm following this thread now for a year and I more or less expected a finished product.

Be careful with the words "finished product" as we own Onyxtree and full Xfrog library with modeler as well and these 2 are "finished products". Both haven't got "any" development for "many" years. No improvements what-so-ever. Onyx recent flower modeler doesn't even have wind.
Active development is better than a "finished product".

This goes for ALL mentioned plugins ! Problems start when porting huge (millions) numbers of instances (read instance locations) from Max to the renderer !!

We are working on multi core support. You can choose to deliver through max for any render engine or deliver natively. You don't need proxies for that like VRayScatter. It happens on the fly with any geometry object.
We already have caching options so scene load goes fast and you don't need to recalculate over an over again, not even at render time!
Even more optimatizations are under development.

Davy

[trick]

Davy,

Thanks for all the info. I'm looking forward to the "finished" product which can show the power you are talking about ! It seems that you are putting more focus on the plant part (Onyx, XFrog), while my interest goes more to the distribution part (GroundWiz, VRayScatter, Forest Pro which are actively developed BTW). I guess the power in your product is that these work thightly together. Maybe I could drive by your office (about 20 min) and see for myself how this thing works

[Davy]

...yep, I was only referring to Onyx and Xfrog as being not actively developed since that's exactly the reason why WacoPlants was born.

Competition is good (for plants and distribution kind of plugins) as it results in better products for the end user.

Davy