How are you guys doing your grass, for your exterior arch viz work. I use Autograss, but was thinking about purchasing iToo, but only if I can do my grass using it; I’m trying to combine some plugins, if I can. Currently, I have MultiScatter, but I prefer Autograss for my grass.
Also, Forest Pro is $100 more than MultiScatter. Is it worth it?
I like Forrest Pack. The great thing is that it has a bunch of presets that come with it for different stuff, they include some decent models. Check out the demo version, its limited in what you can do but I think it will give you a good idea of what it is capable of.
I have used multiscatter and to me Forrest Pack is much better.
forest pro is significantly better than multiscatter. I use it for everything. grass, trees, planting, car parks, office furniture…
being able to go into the scatter setup and move individual ones by hand once it’s set up is a godsend.
1/3 better? Forest Pro is $380 and MultiScatter is $280.
Haven’t tried multiscatter, but Forest Pro is worth it for me. Very powerful, not too hard to learn to a workable level.
I hate being dependant on plugins, but Itoo seem pretty established.
Grass presets are excellent. I use them on jobs with very little tweaking, and I am a tweaker.
I bought multiscatter like 2 years ago and I’m probably going to buy a forest pack license within the next 2 weeks. For 1 simple reason itoo software seems to be way quicker with updates. When Vray 3 was released it took ages until a working multiscatter version was released. Itoo had a beta version I think like within the week and a full version shortly after.
Forest pack is much much better. Multiscatter is good, but when you have a complex scene (I mean not so complex), its soooo slow in viewport. Forest Pack on other hand is really fast in viewport with complex scene (I mean much more complex scene than I even try in Multiscatter).
Forrest Pack + close discussion please 
;).
There’s also VrayPattern. Frugal on system resources and renders huge areas of grass very fast.
forest pro consistently works, has better features, is faster in the viewport, the floating license system is MUCH better. it’s no contest. i’d still recommend forest if multiscatter was $50.
okay, I think I am sold!
couldn’t agree more. forest is an amazing plugin, which, contrary to many other things with max, always work as you would expect. very much like vray I’d say.. that alone is reason enough for a purchase, I think.
it also has quite a few presets for automatic grass creation, which I think you may find useful, if lawns are the main reason you’re looking for a new scattering plugin.
I am not sure why I went with MultiScatter, but I did, and I don’t use it. When I try to use it, my viewport becomes wonky, so I avoid sing it. Also, their support, or lack of, left a bad taste in my mouth. I am planning a new rig and I am being selective on what I install.
I used multiscatter for 2 years now, and switched to forest pack (with railclone bundle) about 3 months ago. Not planning on switching back either. Support is way better, faster updates, presets, performance,…etc) What’s 100$ if you save lots more time and resources using this.
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
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.[quote=“bigbossfr, post:4, topic:45587, username:bigbossfr”]
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
[/quote]
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.
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.