Pros/Cons MultiScatter and Forest Pack Pro

[Art48]

Hi,

A few years ago MultiScatter/VRayScatter was the goto solution for scattering.
Now I've heard from various sources that people prefer Forest Pack.

Can someone who used both point out the reason for this? To me it seems Multiscatter is able to do all the things I would need (granted I don't use it on a daily basis, maybe 1 project a month with it).

[Dave_Wortley]

ForestPro is much better supported and for us the main seller was the fact they have a floating license server.... Their software is too focused on trees if you ask me, we use it for scattering loads of things, they should thinking in tree terms... Material Masks with Forestpro are a pain....

Multiscatter gets updated very rarely, no major features but I found it easier to use.

[Art48]

Ok, a few questions:

"ForestPro is much better supported"
Do you mean communitywise? Like the VRay forums here where everybody is? Or rather terms of developer support? Which kind of support is better? Better software updates or better customer service?

"Their software is too focused on trees if you ask me"
What exactly are you meaning by this? How can a software be focused on trees? How does it show?

"Material Masks with Forestpro are a pain"
In what regard? Is it a pain to say randomize material IDs per scattered object?

"Multiscatter gets updated very rarely"
True that, although I find that I actually have all the stuff I want and I am satisfied with compatibility-updates only. But then again I am no super-heavy user of their software.

One more question:
Can ForestPack handle VRayDisplacementMod? I don't know if its a general limitation that you can't instance VRayDIsplacementMod objects with displacement and I am aware of the workaround to bake displacement and then VRayProxy it.

[Dave_Wortley]

"ForestPro is much better supported"
Do you mean communitywise? Like the VRay forums here where everybody is? Or rather terms of developer support? Which kind of support is better? Better software updates or better customer service?

All of the above....


"Their software is too focused on trees if you ask me"
What exactly are you meaning by this? How can a software be focused on trees? How does it show?

Everything is in tree terms, orientation to ground, distribution, so if you try to do something abstract like cover an object in all directions, not just a terrain type surface, it's not quite as good.

"Material Masks with Forestpro are a pain"
In what regard? Is it a pain to say randomize material IDs per scattered object?

If you want to do material overrides the materials are sort of half retained in Forest Pro, it's a pain sometimes.


"Multiscatter gets updated very rarely"
True that, although I find that I actually have all the stuff I want and I am satisfied with compatibility-updates only. But then again I am no super-heavy user of their software.

See point one.


One more question:
Can ForestPack handle VRayDisplacementMod? I don't know if its a general limitation that you can't instance VRayDIsplacementMod objects with displacement and I am aware of the workaround to bake displacement and then VRayProxy it.[/QUOTE]

Nope, needs to be baked down for both.

[Art48]

Thank you, that information is enough. As I see it we will stick with multiscatter in the short to midterm.

[filip]

I still like more the multiscatter ( using MS longer, but FP recently more often), its seems to me more simple and predictable to use - but maybe only personal thing.
you can achieve similar results with both.

-agree FP is very tree oriented comparing to MS.
-FP seems to me faster growing with nice sets of tutorials and bigger user community, but when I have some issue, with both the reply and support is fast
-FP new effects rollout coming (beta so far), one effect should handle displacement, but I was not successful so far using it on uneven surface+vraydisplacement
-FP edge/cut mode easy to use, but its buggy and I can handle this in more steps using vraydistancetex with MS
-FP library

-MS seems to me faster/simpler to use
-like more the way MS distributes and handles the objects
-MS multipainter IMO better workflow
-missing collapsing to instances

[glorybound]

I have used both and I am currently using Forest Pack Pro. I had some poor experiences with MultiScatter support. It might have gotten better, but at the time, there was no email or forum interaction, at all. Basically, with Multiscatter, you are on your own.

[lukx]

Forest Pack hands down !!!

[Art48]

Forest Pack hands down !!!

Thanks for your input, although it is not very constructive :P

[Neilg]

I had endless crashing and instability issues with multiscatter - using a few of them in a scene took my rendering down to using a single core, but never straight away - only after they'd been in the scene for a while, and deleting them wouldn't fix it until i merged it all into a new max file. Sometimes it would dissapear mid rendering, sometimes they'd corrupt the max file itself.
In comparison i've found forest to do exactly what i'm expecting it to at all times.

[AlexDuche]

I have used both and I am currently using Forest Pack Pro. I had some poor experiences with MultiScatter support. It might have gotten better, but at the time, there was no email or forum interaction, at all. Basically, with Multiscatter, you are on your own.

Sorry to hear about your poor experience
support is usually done by email, we just checked and could not find any unresolved issues related to your account
anyway, this was 4 ears ago, when MultiScatter was in early ages

we agree that the forum is less looked after, and always encourage to use email

[AlexDuche]

I had endless crashing and instability issues with multiscatter - using a few of them in a scene took my rendering down to using a single core, but never straight away - only after they'd been in the scene for a while, and deleting them wouldn't fix it until i merged it all into a new max file. Sometimes it would dissapear mid rendering, sometimes they'd corrupt the max file itself.
In comparison i've found forest to do exactly what i'm expecting it to at all times.

MultiScatter is very stable, we use it in our viz department heavily (iCube)
these are very strange issues you described which we never encountered before and had no reports about
e.g. "using a single core" . "deleting them wouldn't fix it", "corrupt the max file"

are you able to specify version of plugin/max/vray and send us the file?

by the way, common issues which may lead to instability are described in the manual, and usually not related to the plugin itself

[Neilg]

are you able to specify version of plugin/max/vray and send us the file?

by the way, common issues which may lead to instability are described in the manual, and usually not related to the plugin itself

It was 5 years ago, I tried to get support to help at the time. We stopped using it a very long time ago.

[glorybound]

Same here. No support, so I stopped using it.

Bobby Parker www.bobby-parker.com

[rusteberg]

hey there, i use multiscatter and i'm running into some memory issues with 50,000,000 instances of grass blades - curious to know if forest pack would handle larger loads like this? right now i'm having to optimize that number with camera clipping in multiscatter - has anyone run into this problem where forest pack was able to pick up some of the slack? thanks in advance