Grass

[krassi]

Same here.. used multiscatter for years and im happy to get rid of it and now working with forestpack..

Multiscatter is really a viewport-speed-destroyer

Lots of multiscatter stuff and nothings moving anymore..and its far less powerfull than forestpack

[glorybound]

That was my point. Autograss is a few hundred, so instead of that, I'll use Forest Pro, which will also take the place of Multiscatter.

Same here.. used multiscatter for years and im happy to get rid of it and now working with forestpack..

Multiscatter is really a viewport-speed-destroyer

Lots of multiscatter stuff and nothings moving anymore..and its far less powerfull than forestpack

[Neilg]

might be worth looking into railclone too. it might take a minute for you to get it into your workflow, but start by watching a few tutorials and remember what it can do. as time goes on you'll build your own presets for common objects and you'll wonder how you ever worked without it.

I've got a good 10 or so custom presets that get used all the time now and it's a massive time saver.

[glorybound]

might be worth looking into railclone too. it might take a minute for you to get it into your workflow, but start by watching a few tutorials and remember what it can do. as time goes on you'll build your own presets for common objects and you'll wonder how you ever worked without it. I've got a good 10 or so custom presets that get used all the time now and it's a massive time saver.

i saw the bundle. I might just do that.

[snivlem]

VRayPattern is the fastest.

Thrown on a random UV tile, projection map and you won't get any repetition. There are also a few major advantages over scattering method.

1) Clean cut edging, the edge of a path you will always get nice and neat grass.
2) it won't slow down translation before rendering - for instance a golf course would be instant where forest, multiscatter or others would take extra to scatter billions of grass patches!
3) You can also use it for many, many other things.

I wish ChaosGroup could maintain or write an alternate as it can be slow to wait for updated builds and bug fixes.
Not sure why no other renderers have this technology because it really is insanely brilliant.

[duke2]

VRayPattern is the fastest.

Thrown on a random UV tile, projection map and you won't get any repetition. There are also a few major advantages over scattering method.

1) Clean cut edging, the edge of a path you will always get nice and neat grass.
2) it won't slow down translation before rendering - for instance a golf course would be instant where forest, multiscatter or others would take extra to scatter billions of grass patches!
3) You can also use it for many, many other things.

I wish ChaosGroup could maintain or write an alternate as it can be slow to wait for updated builds and bug fixes.
Not sure why no other renderers have this technology because it really is insanely brilliant.

I used VRayPattern early on and it's a fun toy, but other than that it's rubbish. Like most of their products it's extremely unstable, and if you ask for a feature the response is basically "no, that's not what this plugin does". I own most of their plugins and the only one I would recommend is CityTraffic (2).

* Splineland is great in theory, but there are too many cases where it fails and crashes.
* VRayScatter/MultiScatter were good when they came out, but they didn't develop them much and were soon overtaken by ForestPro in features and stability - Itoosoft has always had the upper hand on support.
* VRayPattern has clean cut edging the same way vray displacement does without edge continuity - the pattern mesh just gets chopped off at the boundaries with open edges.
* CityTraffic is great. You can't instance the vehicles so you get the memory hit per-mesh, although you can use VRayProxies for the meshes. It's really, really easy to setup and fast as balls to simulate.

[snivlem]

I used VRayPattern early on and it's a fun toy, but other than that it's rubbish.

I guess it depends on the user mainly and how to take advantage of the tool. I find it unparalleled for large patches grass, armstrong ceilings, balconies, groundcover (planter beds). Not sure what it is like in Max, but the version in Maya has got to the paint where it's quite stable. You are correct though, I do wish ChaosGroup had thought of this or at least have their own version. It is unfair to simply call it a toy.

VRayPattern has clean cut edging the same way vray displacement does without edge continuity - the pattern mesh just gets chopped off at the boundaries with open edges.

It is nice to have properly cut lawn sometimes. It is also possible to mix VrayPattern and ForestPro, Xgen or whatever else.

I haven't tried any other of their products so I won't comment or trash talk their products but my post was mainly intended the OP, and being familiar with his projects, in my opinion, VRayPattern is a fast alternative for grass.

[duke2]

I haven't tried any other of their products so I won't comment or trash talk their products but my post was mainly intended the OP, and being familiar with his projects, in my opinion, VRayPattern is a fast alternative for grass.

Maybe calling it a toy was going too far, but a review (I pointed out why it don't like it) isn't trash talking - it's a review of my experience with a product that the OP is considering.

[snivlem]

No problem - you are right, it is something to consider (Product stability and customer service).

[alexyork]

I've been a big advocate of FPPro for a long time and won't go over all the benefits, as most have been said here already. For me I'd happily pay double what I did for FP. It has paid for itself many times over having saved me countless hours and days of fiddling. I've used MS as well and it's just in another league.

I think where FP can improve is with support in the library for other bundles like Evermotion models etc. and also with some kind of automatic/preset for dealing with grass near object edges, which is currently quite a fiddly process. Other than that it's just spot-on, really... I use it on quite literally every single project.

[Macker]

I've been a big advocate of FPPro for a long time and won't go over all the benefits, as most have been said here already. For me I'd happily pay double what I did for FP. It has paid for itself many times over having saved me countless hours and days of fiddling. I've used MS as well and it's just in another league.

I think where FP can improve is with support in the library for other bundles like Evermotion models etc. and also with some kind of automatic/preset for dealing with grass near object edges, which is currently quite a fiddly process. Other than that it's just spot-on, really... I use it on quite literally every single project.

I absolutely agree with you on every single point.

[Neilg]

I think where FP can improve is with support in the library for other bundles like Evermotion models etc.

What needs to change with this?
We have all of our evermotion trees and plant collections set up as forest pro libraries.

[Morne]

Another +1 for ForestPack
Actually I'm holding both hands up so make that +2

You can't beat the stability, updates and also the SUPPORT actually exist.
I would for sure recommend the bundle where you also get RailClone.

Besides VRay, ForestPack is the best plugin I ever bought

[alexyork]

What needs to change with this?
We have all of our evermotion trees and plant collections set up as forest pro libraries.

I meant through the HQCatalog tool. That browser is excellent for the HQ packs and FPP freebies. I think they now also have support for some Xfrog stuff but not Evermotion yet. How are you you setting up your Evermotion libraries? Do they have thumbnails? I really like the visual thumbnail idea of the HQCatalog.

[Neilg]

yeah. I just save them out myself - in older evermotion pdfs you could select the images in the pdf & copy/save them, in newer ones they already have images saved to use as thumbnails.
So you make a new library in the forest pro browser, and it makes a folder with a thumbnails folder inside it.
I export all trees to a vray proxy, open a new max file and merge all the proxies in, saving that file as an archive into the forest library folder that was created, relink all maps so it's entirely self contained, then drop jpg thumbnails into the thumbnails folder that was created by forest which are all named the same as the corresponding proxy. when you go back to the forest library go to create item, 3d object, then right click on it and go to 'import objects'. select the max file, select all the proxies inside that file and it automatically links all thumbnails ready to use.

If you have the image named the same as the proxy file it automatically links it as a thumbnail, so if you do this as you're converting to proxies and copy/paste the filename it hardly takes extra time.