Is GrowFX the same as GrowFX

[PixelJockey]

Are these guys the same developers with different names?

http://exlevel.com/

http://www.rendering.ru/index.php/plugins/growfx/

Was GrowFX started at iCube and spun off to Exlevel?

[percydaman]

good question!

[PixelJockey]

They're both russian companies and the interface looks the same with the same GrowFX logo at the top. And the price is the same $325 USD.

[PixelJockey]

And this image on the Exlevel site

http://exlevel.com/gallery/images/me...s_4_02_big.jpg

is the same as this image on the iCube - Mentor Plants 4 site

http://www.rendering.ru/files/plugins/pics/435.jpg


Just wondering who you're actually buying GrowFX from.

[Bathyscaph]

Hi,

There are some of the same people involved in both companies but in what capacity I don't know. Anyway some of the best gallery examples come from a chap who, it seems, works for icube. Also, the mentor trees seem to be a product of GrowFX.

For what it's worth, I purchased the tool and had a minor licensing issues. They responded right away and got things settled in no time.

I can say, that I find GrowFX to be an amazing and probably underappreciated tool. It gives you complete freedom as an artist. The downside is that you don't start off with a library of thousands of trees to pick from but once you make one tree you can easily alter it to suit your whims with very few restrictions. Something I didn't know when I bought it was that you can use a displacement map on any of your plant object parts so you can make a gnarly trunk without little effort. You can also do very complex or simple geometric leaves or anything in between. You can grow your plants around scene objects or animate them growing or animate wind effects. It's a great all-around tool and the interface is pretty straightforward until you get to some of the wind stuff anyway.

One other bonus is that you can alter the radius of tree branches in such a way that you can blend them into the trunk much better than I've seen with other tree creation apps. I always look for where the branches hit the trunk when looking at 3d trees.

If I can say one last thing about GrowFX it is that unlike most 3d tree creation apps (which seem to create very precise scientifically diagrams of tree in 3d form) GrowFX works more like a painter would, the trees seem way more organic and more natural to me and once you've created a description for one tree, you can make a million variations of it with ease.

[peterguthrie]

thanks for the review Steve, sounds interesting.

[duke2]

GrowFX is absolutely fantastic. I've made all sorts of custom foliage with it - it's far more flexible than most of the other solutions out there which just assume you're making a particular type of foliage and limit you to it.

[flino2004]

those trees look very similar than the HQ package offering in CGArchitect

http://cgarchitect.vismasters.com/ca...me-1_4513.aspx

[duke2]

those trees look very similar than the HQ package offering in CGArchitect

http://cgarchitect.vismasters.com/ca...me-1_4513.aspx

Yes Mentor is selling them through various resellers, like GrowFX and GradientEdge are sold at rendering.ru as well as their home sites.

[simmsimaging]

We are looking at maybe buying GrowFx for a possible job - wondering if you guys could answer a couple of questions as the guys in Russia are hard to find

1) can you create random variaton in the leaf parameters, like size, and amount of bend etc.?

2) can you create different mesh leaf profiles to make things like oak leaves?

3) can you specify branch locations or is it totally controlled by algorithms/random?

thanks for any help

b

[Bathyscaph]

---We are looking at maybe buying GrowFx for a possible job - wondering if you guys could answer a couple of questions as the ---guys in Russia are hard to find

---1) can you create random variaton in the leaf parameters, like size, and amount of bend etc.?

Yes. Tons of control here. You can do anything really - bend them along the stem, curl them, twist them, vary the size. Great control. You can also use custom leaves but haven't needed that yet. You can also do everything from pine needles to big broad leaves.

---2) can you create different mesh leaf profiles to make things like oak leaves?

With the built in leaves there is some limitation because you edit the the leaf profile with a standard curve dialog. That means that your leaf can't have undercuts anywhere. So for very ornate leaves you'd have to use a custom leaf object. Most common leaves would be doable with the built in leaves but not a true oak leaf. I haven't played at all with the custom leaves ability yet, haven't needed to so far. So I don't know if they can be bent and transformed the way built-in leaves can be.

---3) can you specify branch locations or is it totally controlled by algorithms/random?

Lots of control here. You can distribute any number of objects at any given percentage along the path. You can control the direction they come out, dial up the randomness, etc. There are curve controls for most anything. You could if you wanted absolute control, build your own trunks and then use GrowFX for just the smaller branches and leaves.

---thanks for any help

---b

Honestly, if you are at all interested in building your own trees then I couldn't really think of a better tool. The control is just fantastic. What you won't get is instant trees so I can still see a lot of value in a tool like Onyx. GrowFX has a fully functional demo download. It will give you a good sense of the tool. Still though, I am still learning how to get the most from it. There is quite a lot of control and it takes some time to get the most out of it.

I am trying to do things with trees I don't often see with computer models. For example, I have the lower branches of my pines weeping toward the ground and getting gnarlier where the old dead branches are. The branches toward the top are straighter and healthier. I am adding in dead needles, etc. You can control most any function in GrowFX based on other functions so you can vary parameters over the length of a branch or the length of the tree, etc. Also, the random and vector controls of the tool are just great and if you build a tree well then you just click the random button and make 20 variations of the same tree.

One last small note. I find it's a lot harder to build a good accurate tree then I would have first thought. Not because of the tool but because the most interesting real trees are not very orderly. It can be hard to figure out how many branches until you start seeing leaves, etc. So I've spent some time making sketches and doing research. If you want to make a variety of trees I'd recommend DK's Smithsonian Handbooks: Trees. It shows the branch patterns, shape, scale and leaf and bark details for a bunch of different trees.

BTW, the folks at exlevel are very good at responding to e-mail. I've contacted them a couple of times.

[simmsimaging]

Thanks for the detailed answer - it sounds like it's exactly what I need. I'm going to grab the demo for sure.

b

[Bathyscaph]

Sure. Good luck with it.

[simmsimaging]

Having spent a few hours with the demo, I think I'm going to need it

Powerful, but complex.

Thanks again. /b



btw: exlevel did get back to us pretty quickly and we also very helpful.