Autograss plugin

V-Ray V-Ray for 3ds Max Announcements
1

Dear V-Ray Users,

Autograss, a new grass plug-in for V-Ray on 3ds Max, is now available:

Autograss is a one-click grass solution completely integrated with
V-Ray. It is a V-Ray primitive so it works with all of V-Ray’s
features including shadows, reflections, global illumination, and
depth of field. No need for modeling or exporting proxies, and it
never runs out of memory no matter how many acres of grass you put in
your scene, so you do not need to break scenes into passes. It
includes eleven grass presets, twelve grass material presets, and four
earth material presets. It supports mapping and variation for density,
length, cutoff, thatch, and direction, so you can create scenes with
off-road grass, lawn mowed grass, dried grass in winter, and sports
fields. Watch the tutorial videos on the website to see it in action.
Autograss includes builds for 3ds Max / 3ds Max Design 2008, 2009, and
2010 in 32-bit and 64-bit. Sample scenes are also included. Maya and
stand-alone builds are coming soon.

Best regards,
Vlado

* Autograss is developed by Happy Digital, which is not related to Chaos Software

2

Yep: just forget all the grass textures and instancing plugins. Unlimited grass using just the memory you want !!

3

Think we’ll stick to the old method - in our office it works out at $5,000 total for slightly better grass. a little much I think.

4

Agreed, looks very good but kinda pricey to get for multiple workstations and render nodes

5

Yeah i agree Chris.
It seems very expensive for a “grass” plugin. Sure the results look good, but not worth forking out so much for render nodes and workstations.

6

Ahhh… I’m going to purchase right now, but… wow, wow, wow… That software house it’s crazy!
I think, I don’t know, 99$, max 149$, but…

$275.00 + $275.00 = 550$?

I switch to the good old VRayScatter: more flexible tool. I remember that in the old shop, VRayScatter was similar to VRayGrass, but the software house changes the price (with a correct price imo and with free rendernode).

7

nice looking grass, but I’m with you guys. Thats just prohibitively expensive. Call me spoiled, but nothing I or my company owns, requires render node licenses. I very much prefer to keep it that way.

8

I couldn’t see any wind options to make the grass animated in this - if I were buying a plugin for grass that’d be an absolute must.

Maybe I missed it though.

9

Same here it’s way to expensive for what it does, and there’s no way I’m going to pay to use it on a per node basis.

10

I find it a little ironic, that this plugin, that is charging for bb rendernodes, is built around a renderer, that DOESN’T charge for bb rendernodes. My mind boggles at the number of potential customers lost to this insane pricing structure.

11

Most definitely agreed, Percy. My entire evaluation of the software took about 20 seconds -- skim Vlado’s pitch, click the link, “ooohh, pretty! how much does it cost?” Click. “okay, forget that.” Never going to pay more to a third party that extends V-Ray’s functionality than what we’ve actually paid Chaos for the engine itself!

12

I don’t think they are very interested in feedback on their products either, I was going to drop them an e-mail but can’t find a single link or address on their entire site.

13

…and now the site is down - hmm

Preisler

14

I don’t know if I’m going crazy but now on the home page right under the “Buy it” button is a nice big e-mail address. I could swear it wasn’t there before.

15

I don’t where you guys see all this. I’ve checked the site about 5 times during today and the only thing I get is:

Site Temporarily Unavailable
We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this.

error id: “bad_httpd_conf”

16

I’ve tested this plugin, and it’s bloody excellent. It adds anywhere between 10-40% to the rendertime, but you can cap the memory it uses so that it might only use another 512mb.

I do agree though, that the current pricing structure is somewhat broken. As for the comments about contacting them - this isn’t true at all. Graham is very easy to get ahold of and the support is great. Since the early days of HD Instance for Lightwave, updates are ongoing, and features added, so I wouldn’t have any concerns there!

17

what cubiclegangmaster said.

18

damned ! interesting one but i’m joining the others, what’s that price?.. Vrayscatter or forestpack are “free” compared with that… and i’m not sure that this “plugin” scatter anything other grass… Damned… 75$ plugins and 25$ per node with a price for 10 and more node are abit realistic price i think…

19

It appears the pricing has been adjusted, and seems much more feasible now.

EDIT: I still think the price will have to drop to hook those of us that don’t see this tool as a necessity though.

20

interesting new prices.
I would be more than happy paying the $275 for a workstation license if I got unlimited rendering nodes.