Here is our latest project. The client is having some trouble conveying his ideas and getting everything approved and annexed. Weird too, cause everything around the site is already annexed into the city…But so goes the dilemma. We took some existing models and massed up a couple of new ones. I tried to keep the buildings simple, cause I will eventually be doing the entire site, this is just Phase 1. I used my famous technique of dropping the model onto the “paper plan” and then used the skydome thing. Thanx Bobby… And thanx to the new addition of the Clone and Align command ( insert sarcasm here…lol) filled the site with trees. I tried to use RPC trees, but I keep getting “Preparing Tone Operator” and it hangs. Onyx or Xfrog trees are out of the question, as this is an animation, so I used good ol Max’s foliage. Most of the site is massing anyways so they work just fine. I would like to find another alternative for trees, so if anyone has any ideas. Send em my way. I also drew regions over the ponds and applied a water material for some reflections
An intern last year did some single family residences for this project in SU, so I will be plopping them on as well. Comments welcome. The render times for a 1000px wide image are about 4:35, which almost works out for a 30 sec animation over a weekend for one computer. Thanx all
glad you found the clone and align tool 
now, get a decent xfrog tree, replace the opcaty leaves with simple 3D leaves (there is a nice script for that somewhere here in the forum), convert to vray mesh, repeat your new trick, et voila, you have much nicer trees.
vray has no problem with these, did many many trees this way, also works great in animations, probably even faster than the max foliage.
Awesome…If anyone has that script or a good leaf.. 
Send me a link.
Thanx
I found joconell’s script, but the link is dead. I tried copying and pasting the data from the script into a new file and saving and nothing happens. Thanx all for your help.
Site Plan
If you right mouse click that skydome you can tell it not to receive or cast shadows. I would also exclude sun from the skydome. Great look
Yeah that’s the one, Joconnell made it, I have version 0.06 here, I could send it to you.
But maybe it would be better if he himself jumped in, maybe he has a new one and wants to make it available again.
You also might try to just convert the tree to vraymesh with the opacity leaves anyway, since now vray deals with them much better now, I guess. Just make the blur in the opacity something like 0.01 instead of 1.
I am not using the latest version. No dongle as of yet and still on Max 9. No problems though…Perfectly contecnt to stay…LOL. But send away if you want and I will try it out. Thanx all…Bobby…Will do on the dome…Everything else look ok? I was thinking a little brighter, but some areas get washed out. Thanx all
Hey Eric. I agree about the trees comments. I also notice bad tiling on your roof material. Maybe change to procedural tile with variance. This has great potential.
Here are a couple of updates. Replaced the trees and the renders only went from 4 min to about 12 min. So not bad, but the animation is gonna take forever now…LOL…I really need some freakin servers…
I know the roof is still bad, but I am having trouble with the mapping and I think the owner wants to take off the materials anyways…Looking better??
I know that it may be a pain but why not rotate a half dozen of your trees several degrees, then clone them and place them in various locations throughout your scene? Right now the trees are too repetitive. Just a suggestion.
Yeah, noticed that too. Grab all of your trees and try this script:
sarr = selection as array
count = sarr.count + 1
i = 1
while i < count do
(
select sarr
rotate $ (eulerangles (random 0 0) (random 0 0) (random 0 360))
i += 1
)
Yes…That’s what I am doing now, just in the spots wher ethe tree are in a line… BUt I tried the script…I go into my tree file and select all the proxies…I run the script and then I get
Unknown property “count” in undefined.
That’s odd. I just ran it on some trees in my current project without any problem.
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You want this dog?!
I just opened up a new scene and put some boxes around and stuff…I am running Max 9 with x64 bit. Same error
Ok…Just ran it in 32bit and it worked on boxes..Trying the trees now. Yup worked…64 bit maxscript is different…!!! 
Thanx man… Now can that same script SCALE the tree ever so slighty?
Hrm.. I’m running 2008, skipped Max 9, but have been using that script for ages; one of the few I tinkered with. Did you save it to disk and run it from there? Eh. Hopefully someone with a bit more script experience can make your life, and probably the script, simpler.
Hrmm… give this a try?
sarr = selection as array
count = sarr.count + 1
i = 1
while i < count do
(
select sarr
rotate $ (eulerangles (random 0 0) (random 0 0) (random 0 360))
scale $ [random .975 1.025,random .975 1.025,random .975 1.025]
i += 1
)
Hrmm.. this might make the scale more uniform:
sarr = selection as array
count = sarr.count + 1
i = 1
while i < count do
(
select sarr
rotate $ (eulerangles (random 0 0) (random 0 0) (random 0 360))
randScale = random .975 1.025
scale $ [randScale,randScale,randScale]
i += 1
)
Hi why dont you give a try
cheers
What you need now, is the soulburn script pack from Neil Blevins. There’s a random transform script in there and would do wonders for this thing. Just limit it to Z axis, and give it a -90 +90 degrees of freedom, and press the button a few times. You can also scale them all by a couple of percent which would make it look even more random.
