Trees

[Tangled-Universe]

Seems I wasn't that far off about both pricing as well as E-on's arrogance of not seeing the need to really compete with the competition.

Given the line-up of the products they probably expect to sell a huge amount of <Studio licenses to the Vue fanboys and a significantly smaller volume of Studio/Producer licenses.

So they removed the 1M polycount export limit, good.
Now they need to remove the reselling part of the EULA and also make features available like driving stuff with fractals and dependencies.

I really don't get the restrictions of the Studio/Producer products.
They just don't follow their own naming convention/paradigm.

[mhaze]

I have to ask myself do I need it? for 1/3 the price I can get speed tree architect or for 1/2 the price speedtree studio.  Not quite as versatile but for my needs just as good.

[TheBadger]

"Plant Factory Producer ($1,495)"

HAHHAHHAHHAHH AHHAHHAHA HAHAHHAHHAHHAHHA HAHHAHHA HAHHAHHA HAHHAHA HAHHAHA AHHAHHAH

You cant sell anything you make with it. I guess they think that everyone will buy plants from expert users and not buy the soft. HA! If the soft was affordable I would make my own and get exactly what I want.

Every comment on there was negative, save two. Even if its worth it, if the soft gets a bad knock out the door it wont matter. People will see 1,495 for a modeler that does only one thing, cant be used to earn, and has many stupid restrictions.

If you want to sell a plant you must do it through them. They get a cut and it can only be legally bought through their web site. Hello Daz studio
Probably if I make a print with a tree from there soft, I have to credit them and send them a royalty for every edition number.

BAh!

However, given your feedback, we see that this could become an issue so we have decided to remove the 1 million polygon limitation. Plant Factory Studio will now allow you to create trees and plants with an unlimited number of polygons.

HAHHAHHA HA HA HAHHAHHA hA, again!

Now lets bitch until they lower the price to something we can afford. $1,495 just to make something every other major software can do, only quicker. BS.

[TheBadger]

Plant Factory creators and authors can sell their plant models on Cornucopia3D and keep 70% of all the revenue.  E-on takes only a tiny 30% which is used to manage and maintain the Cornucopia3D site, handle all banking transaction details, and provide a welcoming, hassle-free experience for the thousands of users who buy e-on and e-on broker related content.

HAHHA HAHHAH AHHA HA HA AH. Its a frigging shake down! I hope some one sees these people on the street and punches them in the face.

God bless Planetside and a few other decent hardworking generous developers.

BAh!

[TheBadger]

On Tuesday, June 4 2013, 05:29 by MAD AT YOU
quoteWe agree with the words of one of the commenters that it would be "economic suicide" if e-on were to allow the sale of plants and content created from Plant Factory outside of the e-on universe. Otherwise, people would have very little need to buy Plant Factory if, for example, they could just buy a static plant library produced by Plant Factory./quote

Sell the soft you morons, not the work others do with it! Are you DAZ now?
Sell it at a price everyone can afford and you will sell it to everyone. really stupid.

I wanted to buy your soft not plants others made with it. but at nearly 1500 hundred dollars Ill stick with slower more traditional methods

70%! 30% so you can run a website! Your worse than the american government. Do you want to sleep with our wives too?

I was really liking what I was seeing. But screw this. I can be insulted for free.

Ha! again!


They gave in on the million polly thing in one day. These are kids who are good at math. Not grown up businessman. They did not think any of this through. That pricing structure is so insulting I hope their company fails.

[Tangled-Universe]

They won't fail.

Simply because they have a lot of customers, of which quite a majority is totally uncritical towards the software they make.
E-on isn't really loved by their customers, but the admiration for their software sometimes is of biblical proportions

That in itself will make sure this investment in developing this software will pay off.
Quite a bunch will buy it and especially the Vue only versions will be quite succesful I think.

In the end this is all a total letdown:

1) No selling stuff, unless you're willing to share a 30% cut with them
2) Leafs are converted to billboards upon export -> E-on, some people use renderers which can handle leaf geometry, not all of us use Vue
3) Studio doesn't even all the creative options
4) Studio has options which should belong in Producer
5) Producer has options which should belong in Studio
6) It's unclear whether an annual fee needs to be paid to keep using PF, like with Vue's maintenance paths
7) The pricing structure itself barely competes with anything else

All in all so few incentives to buy this.

When do they learn that these kind of lame things in itself aren't an incentive to buy software, in general?
No wonder piracy is so thriving.

I had a bunch of hundreds dollars ready to be spend, guess I'm gonna use it for something else

[mhaze]

Just looked at speedtree again think I'm going to go with the studio or architect version.

[TheBadger]

^^ Yeah. I had my hopes up too because of those images and videos. I should have been spending my time learning Xfrog, speed, onyx, GrowFX. And deciding what will work for me.
They all have some funny stuff about them too. But not like what I just saw with TPF.

Billboards! Man. I just don't get that. 1500 and its not even real geometry. I feel sorry for that poster who already bought it, and finds the plants to be ugly outside of PF. Worse than Vue plants he said.

here is Maya 2014 video with paint effects... Add a plugin from the list in my first line and you got some power. I think all of the plugins are less than 500? And with maya you actually get a proper 3d soft that does more than one thing.
http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/exploring-maya-2014-with-duncan/

[TheBadger]

Turns out you can do real geometry leaves, not just billboards. So thats good. At least its not total crap. THey posted some images of it. But it really looks like they just hastily posted it as a response to the feed back. So it does not look as pretty as the earlier images they put out.

I have not been around as long as most of you. But is this the worst roll out you have ever seen from a big name in software? I completely understand now, why Matt, Oshyan and Jo are so cautious about what they say and post here, with respect to their program. If expectations are made to rise high, and the result does not live up to it. Then it can get really ugly. Probably does not help that e-on is responding to the criticism poorly.

But I don't feel sorry for e-on at all. Its no different than a movie, or a car, or anything. If you make something to sell, and something about what you made pisses people off, your going to have to hear about it.

Seems that the real problem is just the licensing and multiple versions of the soft. If they would release one all or nothing version at a price like3-400 dollars. And the soft is as great as they claim. Then everyone would buy it.
Their prophet would be in volume rather than much fewer sales on a more expensive product. at 390 bucks they would corner this part of the market and guarantee a long run. No one would use anything else, if its as great as they claim.

Another strange thing is that they are selling versions for OSX, months before a release with no promise of a refund if said version does not happen or sucks.

Its really a disaster. From what I have been reading, most of their user base is made of amateurs and students. How are students and hobbyists going to spend 1500 for a toy? Nothing about what their doing makes much sense to me. Maybe I just can't see the forest from the trees?


mhaze

Some things about speedtree studio do look really nice. The maya plug-in, for one thing, looks great. It even makes using Maya easier. It also looks like a much better pack than the least expensive version, relative to the full version.

Maybe e-on will change their minds and put out a full version that makes sense and is priced more honestly? Because right now, I do think what their doing is very shady.

[Tangled-Universe]

Turns out you can do real geometry leaves, not just billboards. So thats good. At least its not total crap. THey posted some images of it. But it really looks like they just hastily posted it as a response to the feed back. So it does not look as pretty as the earlier images they put out.

Yes indeed, it's a nice example of damage control.

I have not been around as long as most of you. But is this the worst roll out you have ever seen from a big name in software? I completely understand now, why Matt, Oshyan and Jo are so cautious about what they say and post here, with respect to their program. If expectations are made to rise high, and the result does not live up to it. Then it can get really ugly. Probably does not help that e-on is responding to the criticism poorly.

I remember years ago Planetside did handle publically announced deadlines and such, which indeed caused expectations of something being released at a certain time, hence the name deadline. One or two deadlines weren't made and thus this is why they don't do this anymore.
I think given the size of the business and in relation to the things you say Michael, that that's a good thing.
There's only one possible downside I can see and that's having lack of deadlines means there's not as much incentive to get things done as when using deadlines. However, easily it could be that internal deadlines are being used. I don't know, doesn't really matter.
In the end they (Planetside) do this smarter than E-on.

Seems that the real problem is just the licensing and multiple versions of the soft. If they would release one all or nothing version at a price like3-400 dollars. And the soft is as great as they claim. Then everyone would buy it.
Their prophet would be in volume rather than much fewer sales on a more expensive product. at 390 bucks they would corner this part of the market and guarantee a long run. No one would use anything else, if its as great as they claim.

...

Its really a disaster. From what I have been reading, most of their user base is made of amateurs and students. How are students and hobbyists going to spend 1500 for a toy? Nothing about what their doing makes much sense to me. Maybe I just can't see the forest from the trees?

Exactly. However they think completely different about this. They aim to sell many licenses of the Vue-related versions to current Vue owners.
These versions are at the pricing sweet spot you mentioned.
Vue users hate E-on, mostly, but tend to be obsessed with the software and think nothing compares to it.
You can see that in a comment on FaceBook where E-on replies saying that sales are going very well, because happy people don't post and complain. In other words they say that the mass critics are just non-sense. Just another insult like the 1M poly cap.
This is of course a nice fallacy, but imagine if it is true then this definitely fits with my description that Vue-adepts lack skepticism and criticism.

Maybe e-on will change their minds and put out a full version that makes sense and is priced more honestly? Because right now, I do think what their doing is very shady.

Believe me, they won't. They have a tunnel-shaped vision with a bright dollar sign at its end.

[mhaze]

I agree TU, the Vue user will jump at this and it will make a big difference to the quality of Vue plants.  Big studios might go for producer and smaller ones for studio, maybe.  Whatever happens, E on won't lose out too much.

I'm going for Speedtree architect and I might upgrade to studio later.  After playing with it for a while it really is flexible and relatively easy to use, it has it's quirks!.  It's very reliable and there's good feedback from the forum

[Tangled-Universe]

Hi Mick,

About SpeedTree Architect...

I find their website quite confusing and I especially mean that I miss a kind of comparison chart which would clearly tell me the difference between SpeedTree Architect, Studio or Cinema.

Architect comes at $495, which is ok for me budget-wise, but studio is $895 and I really need to think really well about it before buying.
Knowing their differences to see which fits my needs best is critical of course.

The website says Architect allows full use of "The SpeedTree Modeler" and that's basically all you know.
Clicking on it shows some info about it and here and there you see a couple of lines what Studio and Cinema have, but little on Architect...sigh.

I suppose I can't export animated trees with Architect. I would "only" be able to model trees and export them to any desired format including FBX.
That's correct, isn't it?

Cheers,
Martin

[mhaze]

Yes, I know the problem. There is a comparison chart. Go to buy or evaluate and on the top menu and hover over "tree rendering softtware tools" and there's  a compare editions option.  The only significant things you cant do in architect is draw by hand(didn't find that all that useful) and unwrapping of maps again not essential. Yes animation is excluded - though it could be done in other programs.

[mhaze]

BTW you can download an evaluation copy of each to test which you want.

[efflux]

Sorry to bump this with nothing new to say. But I just keep coming back to this
[attach=1]

Thats pretty darn nice looking!
And if its as fast to make as the videos make it look. Well, thats something.

That's a great looking tree for sure but you don't need all your trees to look that great. As for E-on, I can see why people would use that software to quickly churn out stuff for movies etc that then probably has to have substantial postwork to look good. I packed in with E-on at an earlier Vue version.

There is actually a free tree generator which in some ways works quite well. It's called Arbaro. It's not easy to use. You can't see what you are doing so it takes practice. There are a few other issues. Branches are separate but with the right combined software you could definitely get some good trees just not so ready made. This is a render of a palm created with it: