Xfrog software

[tricky]

After making a financial mistake some years ago by purchasing Bionatics (nothing but crashes and instability), we are considering commiting to an alternative tree package.

I have been running through a tutorial for XFrog 3.5, which, while potentially quite complex seems a logical approach to generating reasonable looking trees, mainly for animation usage. However, it seems odd that Xfrog is at version 3.5 for the windows based standalone version, whereas they are up to version 4 and 4.3 for Maya and Cinema4D. Looking deeper into the site, it seems that there are free plugins for Max, but they seem to only talk about Max version 6!

This seems rather out of date considering we are up to Max2009 64bit.

Has development stopped for this software as far as Max and standalone are concerned? I wouldn't want to commit if they were winding up the business.

[glorybound]

Bionatics

Me too.... I purchased it and never used it. If I did get it to work they never looked really good.

The issue I have with xfrog is when I export to 3ds the export tiny so when I scale them up everything is larger... so I have huge leaves.

[tricky]

Mmm. It looked so promising.

I have since been looking at Onyx and Treestorm. I must say that the website doesn't fill me with much confidence, but on seeing what some people claim to have produced with it (they can look amazingly photorealistic) I am coming around to the idea. Obviously, it will require practice and patience...

Only issue I have with Onyx and Treestorm is that I can't seem to be able to find a trial version anywhere which is rather annoying. $600 USD is quite a gamble.

[dbuchhofer]

yea the xfrogs can be a bit painful, but then, there really isn't a tree solution that ISN'T painful heh.

I tend to find the obj export from the 3.5 standalone editor combined with guruware obj importer to work fairly well as it breaks the trees up as 1obj per material, along with a few 1 liner scripts to convert xfrog materials to be faster vraymats and collapse down in the right order it can make for a "fairly" easy pipeline. doing them by hand sucks arse though.

There is a max9 beta plugin somewhere.. I think i had found it on their yahoo mailing list, but its not terribly stable and the OBJ thing seems to work smoother.

Also, beware, their xfrogtune while nice as a simple app to adjust the polycounts/looks of an xfr saves xfr's that are INCOMPATIBLE with the regular xfrog 3.5 app. making it virtually useless.

Also a hint for xfrog trees if you do get into them.. you can shut off the most detailed 2-3 layers of branching in the xfrog "tree" without almost no visual loss in quality unless you're RIGHT under the tree. and that kills off like 30-40% of the polycount. heh.

[dbuchhofer]

Only issue I have with Onyx and Treestorm is that I can't seem to be able to find a trial version anywhere which is rather annoying. $600 USD is quite a gamble.

Yea, I talked to him on the phone and told him flat out that the lack of a demo was the reason we haven't purchased his application. He didn't seem to mind heh.

and speedtree seems so focused on the gaming market now.

[alias_marks]

about a year ago we looked into what package to go with xfrog vs. Onyx. Eventually we went with Onyx. We also hesitated based on the product presentation on their website (just a terrible website compared to xfrog). however, the content is good and tree storm with wind paramaters etc, seemed to outplay the benefits of xfrog.

Onyx seems to have more traction in the industry (edit: Arch Viz that is) overall all as well = more support, tutorials, content, etc. A great benefit if you ask me.

[tricky]

Well, I've taken the plunge and ordered OnyxTree Broadleaf to begin with with a view to upgdaring if we like the package. Still seems odd to me that they don't have a demo. Weird company.

[Clifton Santiago]

Well, they are a couple old hippies living in Spain. Can't expect them to really be keeping up...

[dbuchhofer]

broadleaf but not treestorm?

[Giovanni]

Well, since my ElectricImage times, Onyx Tree Storm has been the way.
Recently we have been looking at alternatives, I think it was Bionatics (NetFX?), with long phone chats with the sale person.

At the end of the day, it was a large commitment, and we gave it up.
The libraries are too expensive (individual seeds, etc.) and the licensing was just scary.

Onyx has some clear advantages, and those were the decisive factors:

- Cheap (at $600 you get the whole encilada, all creators standalones, plus the plugin for max, plus all libraries). If this is expensive for you, I am not sure you are in the right business.. :O...
- Simple. Once you copy the tiny plugin in the plugin folder, you are ready to go. Warkstation and any number of slaves you want. Just copy one file. No licensing, no hassles. Inside MAX, just go choose the tree you want from the libraries, that, again, can be copied anywhere. Easy. The creator standalone software does need licensing, a password file they will send you once you register.
- The software itself is like the website: straight to the point, little overheads, sturdy. Once the right plugin has been published for your Max / OS, the thingy just works, many trees, all "live" storm objects, no need for any trick / workarounds or imports / exports.

Sure, to get photorealistic close ups you need some mapping, and to play with the external editor, tweak plates and such, but I think it is worth while.

BTW, we do architectural viz...(doh!).

Regards

[glorybound]

NatFX

I remember those nice long talks with sales at NatFX. Once I purchased the application I never heard from anyone and support wasn't very friendly. You get (or I bought) a years worth of support. Now that I am running MAX 2009 and my contract is up I have no way of upgrading unless I buy more support.