Onyx Broadleaf vs GrowFX

[BBB3]

Hey guys,
Just wanted to draw attention to a comparative review of Onyx and GrowFX I've just posted on my blog. Thought it might be of interest to some of you here.
All the best,
BB

[Six8]

Nice write-up. My much-less-thorough research of the two products led me to purchase Onyx, for many of the reasons you cited.

[BBB3]

Sorry, I now realise I probably posted this in the wrong place. Well, the render is Vray, at least...

[crazy homeless guy]

I own Onyx, but have never really been that happy with creating custom trees in it. Once you go to far with one setting,you almost always need to reload the file and start over.

Anyway, ....I might give GrowFX a try based on this article, but how do you feel about Vue 9.5 xStream? Is it of value compared to GrowFX?

[prateekvishwa]

is thr any good tutorial available online for GrowFx. I m comfortable with Onyx but need good tips for texturing model there. I agree with "crazy homeless guy" regarding customizing trees on Onyx.

[MoonDoggie]

Great article BBB3.

[BBB3]

Exlevel has plenty of good tuts on their website to get you started. Try not to be put off by the initial dautiness though...

[windrockwater]

Awesome article! So few good reviews of plant programs and plugins are out there. I have been struggling with Vue Xstream for almost 2 years now and am not happy with it and regret the 2k or so i wasted. I have only managed to use it (as a plant plugin) on a couple jobs. I found it unbearable to work with in max (mostly viewport issues and some file size/loading issues and loooong render times). Those are 3 big strikes against it IMHO. And no DR unless you pony up even more dough. But its still loaded up on my PC and every now and then I monkey with its 10 million dials and buttons for fun. But not for production anymore. Its got an odd selection of opacity mapped plants in its library. Some quite good. Many are quite bad. It does some things really great but cannot do some simple things that should be standard. Its kind of baffling why. I dont consider it a good, workable, real-world plugin for plants. Its an amazing landscape terrain tool tho.

If anyone would like to know more about Vue Xstream and my own critique (good and bad to be fair), let me know. As a landscape architect, i appreciate your great review so thanks.

I have spent more time lately building a library of specific regional plants for my needs from various sources (Xfrog, etc.). I have found some great ones on Turbosquid actually. And now I am cleaning up some great maxscript code for my own simple little plant plugin app for max.