Massive 3D project using GrowFX

[3DMK]

Hey Jamie, nice image.
We have just been trying to produce some more trees using onyx, with curved "plate" leaves with opacity maped leaves. They are coming out around 3 million polys a tree and are hard to handle until we convert to Vraymesh.
Does grow FX have the ability to have curved leaves, and is the poly count high?

Hi Bob-cat,

here is an example of a very mature tree nicely optimised at approx 1 million Polys. This sort of tree could easily set you back up to 5 million polys if you're not careful. GrowFX lets you easily control the polygon number & optimize to your hearts content.
Most trees I use in projects [Unless they are for closeup] are between 200,000 to 600,000 & you can make almost any tree look fine with that amount of polys. Remeber you may have to work with many tree & plant species in a scene & keeping things at this level allows you to do 2 variations of each tree species which adds more realism.

The massive scene I did in the renders with all those different tree & plant models [30 unique trees & plants] was only using 4.5 gb of RAM...[and that includes all the other Hi poly proxys like cars etc.

Hope this helps

[snivlem]

Hi All,

Just recently finished a massive 3D project using GrowFX.

Nice scene, what kind of render times where you getting with that.

I also see you are from Australia, how does it do Eucalypts, I find it so difficult to make those sort of trees!

[Franx]

@3DMK

Does GrowFX have some sort of seeding feature, so you could build a tree and then change the seed to quickly make variations? Couldnt find anything about that on their site.

Thanks

[jacksc02]

Yes you can change the seed easily.

[Neal.Phillips]

amazin work and great read, thanks for sharing.....

you've inspired me to download the demo and have a play!

[3DMK]

Nice scene, what kind of render times where you getting with that.

I also see you are from Australia, how does it do Eucalypts, I find it so difficult to make those sort of trees!

Thanks
Render Time was fine although I don't remember what is was as I use DR with 9 machines....approx 1 & 1/2 hours for a 5000px render, using Light Cache & Brute-Force- scene uses about 4.5GB. Even though the scene is packed with geometry it renders super fast as it's only using one light [SUN]. The same scene with lots of lights would have much, much longer render times.
Making eucalyptus trees in ANY software gives me headaches....lol... They are such unique looking trees that it requires a lot of reasearch to pin down the actual shape you are trying to reproduce as they can vary so much even with the exact same scecies. Saying that, I have made much better looking Eucalypts in GrowFX than I ever did in Onyx....& in a fraction of the time.

Hope this helps

[3DMK]

Now sell your aussie trees! I am sure there would be a few sales

Sounds tempting, but it's the long hard road that always gets us the best results....
I am going to do a couple of Video Demos soon of using GrowFX that I am sure will make most people say ...stuff the Library I want to know how to use it properly.
It's a lot like 3dsMax & Vray...at first sight there are so many parameters to change yet with a bit of time & patience most people get to understand it.
There is still a LOT of things I don't understand about Vray but that hasn't stopped me using it succesfully. GrowFX is the same. Getting to a usable level is not that hard, it just takes a certain amount of time.

Thanks
jamie

[jacksc02]

Some video tuts would be great.
The more real world examples for growfx the better.

[3DMK]

Some video tuts would be great.
The more real world examples for growfx the better.

I am doing a couple this week so I'll let you know asap

Cheers
Jamie

[ajroane]

... Getting to a usable level is not that hard, it just takes a certain amount of time.

It's true. I downloaded the GrowFX demo over the weekend, after being motivated by this thread. I was able to make a decent Honeylocust tree in just a few hours. I wouldn't even call the learning curve steep, its just a little different. The amount of freedom provided by the program is amazing. Check out the xoio tutorial on ronenbekerman.com for a simple and straightforward guide to get started. It would be awesome to also hear your suggestions for modeling with GrowFX, Jamie.

Thanks,
Andrew

[3DMK]

GrowFX Real-world Demo Videos

Some video tuts would be great.
The more real world examples for growfx the better.

Here are a few real-world examples of why a parametric object such as GrowFX is so much better than a static mesh library.

Object reaction & slice

I will make the max scenes availible soon as well so you can check out how easily scene interaction works with the GrowFX demo.

Cheers

Jamie

[3DMK]

Surface Distributor

[3DMK]

Grass Slice Animation

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

thats really nice of you Jamie, thanks for the insight!

[m_hinks]

Sorry if you have already mentioned, but I could see - how/what did you use to scatter the planting? Forest etc. Did you proxy the trees? 4.5 gig of ram for a 5k image with heavy planting seems far fetched with me scenes! Your input would be very interesting.

Thanks,
Mark