Plant Factory
Hansmar
Posts: 2,920
Hi all,
By chance I found out that Plant Factory from e-on software is now free. e-on software has been acquired by another company, that does not want to proceed with the 3D software and therefore made all products of e-on free for download. With Plant Factory, you can make all kinds of plants. There is also a quite extensive Plant Catalog with all kinds of premade plants. The catalog comes in several downloads. I have not yet downloaded them all, but the ones I have seen look very good. Of course, they come with a downside for Bryce: high polygon count and large memory use. But it can be worthwhile to use some of these plants if you want some. You can export them as 3ds for the best result (fbx does not put the constituents in the right place and I have not tested obj yet). You can also create plants from scratch and should be able to import meshes for leaves, etc. (I think). I have not tested a lot of options yet.
I exported some plants, including one ground cover plant, that I instanced multiple times. Most of them I gave quite some wind effect in Plant Factory. The plants come in quite some subdivisions, so you do not have to have the same texture on all of the leaves, for example. This render uses the plants as exported to 3ds, but for some textures the transparency was set at 100%, so I changed that. The present scene is around 203 MB, so at the border of what Bryce can take in practice. However, I used the textures as exported (pictures) and could have lowered the memory use by changing into procedural textures.
By the way, also the e-on product Vue is free for download now. Vue looks to me like a kind of a Bryce on steroids with options for growing plants in an ecosystem, etc., but not with all the options Bryce has for e.g. lights. I tried Vue many years ago on another computer with much less memory and that was no success.
Neither Plant Factory, nor Vue will be updated anymore (of course).
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Comments
Bentley purchased E-On some years back, and has been releasing new versions of Vue. This move is not directly related to the acquisition, but (in as far as we can tell) to the ways in which the company is developing.
Thank you Hansmar and Richard. I downloaded Vue and Plant Factory and forgot to install them.
Looks nice thanks Hansmar for the info
Thank you Hansmar. I was aware that these Vue things are available for free, there is a thread in the Commons (6 May)
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/685816/vue-plant-factory-now-free/p1
pretty nice +
Thanks, Horo. Maybe I should read the commons forum to not miss too many things (I only focus on Bryce).
I made a scene with the Gritstone Hills (David and Horo), carving out a river, using the texture of the Bonus terrain of the High Resolution Terrains Set 4 (David and Horo) and a sky with IBL by Horo. There are four versions of a pine tree from PlantFactory, though I was too lazy to properly modify the (picture) texture of the planes that create the leaves. Because there are so many leaves, I just put the texture on no transparency. If you look closely at the closest trees, you can see that there are rectangles where there should be trees. But it is not too problematic here. However, I could probably have reached the same result with two versions of the tree, instead of four. You do not recognise the different versions very well in this render. I instanced these trees multiple times. I further added three instances of a dead pine tree and several instances of two versions of a bush.
This one came out very nice, Hansmar.
Beautiful, Hansmar!
Horo, NGartplay, Thanks!
+ 1
Hansmar - I agree beautiful scene.
My Plant-Factory Trees turn out every time black or darkish inside Carrara.
The Textures are all correctly applied but still no luck outside Vue, only Cinema 4D is working
?
Although I love freebies I'll pass on this. I don't think I will ever use it and it will just occupy space on my hard drive. From what I read in the Commons, the downloads are huge.
Plant Factory itself is 1.3 GigaByte in size
you can install the Catalog on external USB
I did that too
On a side note: Plant Factory is not needed unless you want to create your own plants
you are fine with Vue and the Plant Catalog. Trust me.
This was done with the plants that ship with Vue. No Plant Catalog plants used
I'll look for some video tutorials to see if I'll use it. I only use Bryce and a bit of Wings 3D, no other 3D software. Thanks for the suggestion.
if you do I recommend GEEKATPLAY
Thanks Fettbemme
Geekatplay was awesome!!!!! Great landscape, Fettbeme.
Over the weekend I watched a few of the beginner’s tutorials for both Vue and Plant Factory, interesting software but Bryce is more user-friendly. I can’t like the interface as it has multiple windows and I don’t have enough grey cells to learn these programs.
Thanks for the suggestions and link to Geekatplay
I don’t know how I missed your beautiful landscape, very nice work.
well, it's there in case you want to toy with it. it's free after all. no loss
btw. learning new stuff is good brainjogging. this way you minimize the risk of getting neurodegenerative problems. depending on age that is of course.
glad you like the landscape.
Thanks Fettbemme for the encouragement. Daz studio was always free but I still couldn't learn it, back in the days when I had a lot more grey cells.
You are not alone with DAZ Studio learning curve. I admit, I gave up on it years and years ago. I did once in a while toy with it but found the program hyper unintuitive. Also as far as content management goes offers Blender momentarily the best solution. Also with Plugin development is Blender unmached. DS is like IClone without the Addon-Bandwagon. The UI is a cluttered mess. Carrara, Bryce even Blender is lightyears ahead of DS in terms of userfriendliness. Though the Material Editor in Bryce remains somewhat a mysterious thing I cant get my hands on. Carrara is much better in that regard. My opinion: Daz Studio is not designed for the artist. Artists think like Bryce or Carrara. Creative. But DS is in no way creative. In that regard it missed the mark.
I tried Blender too, but I didn't succeed there too. Personally I have to say, I'm only using Bryce and a bit of Wings 3D because of David's and Horo's amazing video tutorials and the tutorials by Robin Woods for Bryce.
I'm retired and 3D keeps me brain occupied. Grandad of four who are luckily over twenty, they all have their own Playstation stuff and I can concentrate on my problems LOL. Sometimes they even buy me stuff. Can you believe that? Normally it's the other way round (well, it used to be like that). But keep on doing your Bryce artworks. Bryce has a unique Renderengine, qualitywise (it's not the fastest). Bryce is damn good for abstract or corrupted geometry renders. it does look awesome.
Rendered with Bryce 7 Pro
Fettbemme - when I saw that Vue (Vue d'Ésprit was the original name) and Plant Factory became freely available, I thought a bit about it and then decided to skip that generous offer. I have Carrara from version 3 up to 8.1 but hardly use it. Bryce has a Tree Lab, which is quite versatile but not very obvious to use. I have no experience with the one that comes with Carrara. I experimented with Arbaro a bit with quite nice results. I started Studio with version 0.82 and updated up to 4.8., and had experimented with Blender as well. Which is the best program? Answer: the one you know best.
I used to have Vue 8 I think it was (Pioneer with Render Module and Import ) Than they dashed the Cornucopia site and I had no more access to the old Email. So that was the end for me using Vue.
Glad it's free now. I don't use Plant factory. The nodes scare the crap out of me. I try to keep sane by using the Plants only, and they are a lot. Actually Plantfactory is something for nerds that need their daily challenge. Wanna see what Plantfactory looks under the hood? I'm doing fine with the trees that come with the Plant catalog. I like Vue but I'm not crazy to ruine my spare time with understanding Plantfactory. LOL
Bryce has a good scattering tool like in Carrara. But with tree creation I look rather out of the window. It's way to hard for me to understand. I even shy away from the Material Editor in Bryce.
Fettbemme that's a very cool render, I like it. I'm retired too, I spend my days doodling in Bryce and my better half with Crosswords and Sudoku.
Yes Horo the best program will be the one you know the best.
That's right. We grow with the 3D software that works best for us. I was a graphic designer with pencil paper and acrylics. We didn't have computers in the old days. In the past I thought I need to know all 3D Software that there is. I started with Strata 3D back in 2000-ish something on a Apple Performa Plus. Then Amapi 3D 5. It was all Coverdisk freebies then. I even know when Blender was kosting money then. First Carrara on cover disk was version 5. That was the holy grail. Later 6 and 7 followed. By version 8 I had to buy it and got it with a huge discount. Glad I did. My wife when she was still alife said often can you stop that stuff? I in fact like it and was doing it anyway.
Excellent render fettbeme!
I can relate to your story here with coverdisk freebies. Nice render!
I too am retired and agree one must find things to exercise the noggin .. you know lest the rust begins to settle in... so I spend days doodling in Bryce, photoshop and an array of digital painting. However, my first love has always been sketching but love to get crafty in other projects like molding clay and sewing. I have had Vue since a coverdisk freebie Vue d espirit I think version 2 and eventually bought early versions of Vue 7 and 11. I am glad it is free as I wasn't going to spend good money on another software only to see it go like Adobe.. and do a subscription. I downloaded both and imported a few plants into Bryce to toy around with--Some palms and papyrus. I like Bryce trees but this gives me some creative variety to play with... after all, it's my world.. I can do with it what I want.. as Bob Ross would say