Bionatics Techniques

[riltis]

We are using Bionatics Natfx tree plugin for MAX and Vray and are having lots of problems trying to get the desired quality and polygon count for the trees. I am interested in either the billboard mode or full geometry.

If any body out there has any tried and true techniques on the settings for this plugin PLEASE HELP!

[dbuchhofer]

Personally I gave up on bionatics a while back. though, I don't have any better suggestions at the moment. if the Xfrog importer wasn't so bare, they would be a good solution.

One Reason: Its a pain to get a useful tree out of it.
Second Reason: Expensive. Both in $ and in polygons.. a full tree needs a high age setting.
Third reason: Once your 'service contract' is up, you're shit out of luck for upgrades. (For example, They won't supply a max 6 version to me.)

One thing for them, Support.. Call them. They will help you.

[riltis]

Thanks for the response!

I am finding that Natfx is a very frustrating program!

[dellis]

Blur Studios had a plugin awhile back called L-Parser....not sure if its been updated to the current release of MAX yet though. Very powerful for making trees...but takes a bit of futzing around to seperate the leaves from the branches and stuf.

[e3d]

There is an updated version of the plugin released today that fixes all the bugs that were in the Max 6 release of NatFX.

If you are using billboard trees set the lod to +3 and curvature to 5. This will give you nice looking trees.

In terms of speed for rendering, exclude the trees from receiving shadows, this will really increase the render speed.

Otherwise you could ditch max completely, as we have, and use Natfx for Maya which is amazing!!!!

Cheers

Neil