Speedtree 7 ?

[lukx]

Does anyone use Speedtree? I juts saw their new Speedtree Architect and it looks quite interesting compared to GrowFX http://www.speedtree.com/tree-modeler.php

[chriserskine]

are they all still opacity mapped leaves?

I would go growfx if your looking to use with vray.

maybe i would look at speed tree closer if i was doing anything with game engines.

but growfx is very powerful, doesn't feel like its limited it any particular type of tree. and you can make low poly trees with opacity maps in it too if you like. its just got a bit of a learning curve. it also helps to have people around who are experts in plants.

[lukx]

Yeah I have been using GrowFX for years now. I just was curious if someone has both and could compare.

[AndresAhumada]

Hello !!!
I think we should expect Edward publish the beta growfx NodeBased.
It's something in the forums already mentioned.
Does anyone know anything?

[tzaar]

Very much looking forward to a (standalone?) node based updated version of GrowFX! But I don't know much more than what was in that brief little post at the exlevel forum.

For Max, V-ray and arch-viz it seems to me GrowFX is the best, most affordable option. And good presets can be bought, if one doesn't want to start from scratch.

Speedtree has a nice fun editor with speedy feedback, but when I tried it felt it was too hard (maybe lack of knowledge though!) to build anything realistic. You can build generic or fantasy trees in minutes. But if you have some specific species in mind, and want to control things like phyllotaxy - the pattern of growth and winding of branches and leaves, it seems to fall short. I remember people complaining about Onyx for having to much weird botanical terms one couldn't possibly learn - but I found it very straight forward and simple. But sadly it is hopelessly outdated and unstable.

Then there's the Plant factory, which does many things right. And is potentially the best editor for creating plants. But I stopped exploring that path when I realised that it was unrealistically expensive to buy for the whole studio I was at at the time.

btw, check this place out out:
http://algorithmicbotany.org/virtual_laboratory/
it has lots of papers and research on "virtual botany". And also some software, that sadly is way to technical and weird for me.
But just look at page 4-5 in this paper: http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/...2009.small.pdf
Oh, how I would love for some software like growfx/speedtree/plantfactory to adopt stuff like this. As far as I've tried any of those it seems very difficult or impossible to get self organizing realistic systems like that. Not saying you can't get nice results without this though...

[AndresAhumada]

Plant Factory its fantastic.....

but the price.........

[mitviz]

i use speedtree for unity alot, its a great plant creation software if you know what you are doing but never tried grow fx