The Plant Factory Discussion - share your experience and workflow etc. :)

[czarnyrobert]

Hi Guys !

I was in the business of virtual vegetation for last ten years - first I made a lot of models based on L-Systems code, then for 6 years I made The Plant Factory models.

Recently I was setting a personal website about 3D plants : http://GreenGene.republika.pl

Maybe you'll find some interesting ideas there ?

If you have some suggestions, or something I should add/modify there - please let me know - here, or send me an e-mail.

Take care !

czarnyrobert
http://troc.cgsociety.org/gallery/

[Walli]

this is a very nice overview and compilation!

[Walli]

by the way, seems that we "suffered similar fate".

[rcallicotte]

Thanks Robert.  I like your compilation.  Plant Factory hasn't been out very long.  How could you have been making plants for years or did I misunderstand you?  Seems like a great program.

[TheBadger]

czarnyrobert, some cool stuff. I really like the other-wordly plants.

[geekatplay]

I have few tutorials here : http://www.geekatplay.com/tpf.php

[TheBadger]

Hi geek.
Used your sites tuts for other things before. Good little place you got there.
There are a few voices in the various tuts. I take it that you are the voice in the TPF tuts?

Nice to see you around here. Maybe you guys will learn to love TG as you do vue, and build a few tuts for us too?

Cheers.

[rcallicotte]

Thank you!

I have few tutorials here : http://www.geekatplay.com/tpf.php

[Bluestorm]

For anyone interested, TPF 2014.5 is out. The blog entry can be found here: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/news/blog/index.php?post/2014/05/19/TPF-2014.5-Now-Available

In contrast to public expectation, the upgrade is free for everyone and not just for maintenance customers.

Some of the new features:

- Better rendering with billboards

- The ability to create presets for age, health and season

- Drastically improved export, new export formats such as C4D and LWO

- Changes to the EULA. You can now exchange or sell static plants that you created for work purposes (e.g. work for hire). There is still DRM on scene files from TPF and on the TPF species file, but it is now possible to give away plants for free through a dedicated area on C3D. You don't need to be a vendor for this. Just upload your plants there and then other people can download it for free, tailored to their license. If you want to sell plants to end users, you still have to use C3D, though.

- There's a new free application called Plant Factory Exporter. This allows everybody to open *.tpf species files that you might have purchased and export static meshes from the file. So, you do not have to own Vue or TPF to make use of TPF variations. Just use the exporter and create as many variations (including, age, helath season, if built in by the plant modeler) as you wish and export them as static meshes.

Until June 1st, TPF Studio is offered for 695 $ if anyone is interested. I still think that the regular price is too high, but the 695 $ are a price tag that I consider to be quite fair. You really do get a pretty extensive software with similar capabilities to Speed Tree and much more functionality than XFrog. And it really is quite stable, I have rarely had any crash. E-on did some good work with the code on this software.

[reck]

For anyone interested, TPF 2014.5 is out. The blog entry can be found here: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/news/blog/index.php?post/2014/05/19/TPF-2014.5-Now-Available

If you want to sell plants to end users, you still have to use C3D, though.

So they profit from all your work?

[TheBadger]

Thanks for the info bluestorm. Have to upgrade.

@Reck
Im very critical of these no share rules too. But to be fair, its not really all our work. Since it is node based the user is making things out of parts made by others. A node is kinda like in asset I think. So arguably everything one makes with node based software is derivative to a degree.

Anyway, there are ways around it. But who wants the trouble.

Just thinking out loud.

[reck]

Badger, I just don't like the sound of a company selling you expensive software only for them to then insist that you hand over money for anything you sell.

It's like Planetside insisting they get a cut of of any prints you sell of your Terragen landscapes.

What about 3D modelling software as well. Can you imagine spending time creating objects in a particular 3d graphics package and then having to give the developer a cut of the objects you sell.

Why is the Plant Factory any different?

[TheBadger]

I am 100% on your side on this. I Just like to think about the possible arguments. Its an interesting topic to me.

But really, I don't believe that a rule like TPF and speedtree use would hold up in court. Its just that cases like we are thinking about have not gone through the system too much.

But like I said, who wants the problems?

[masonspappy]

But really, I don't believe that a rule like TPF and speedtree use would hold up in court. Its just that cases like we are thinking about have not gone through the system too much.

Would that hold up in American courts? That is exactly the equivalent of a hardware store insisting it has ownership rights to your house because they sold you the hammer you used to build it.

[Tangled-Universe]

Below is what I replied on a FB page:

I'm curious how a serious court case would end if such thing would ever happen.

Patenting software to protect IP and investments is quite undisputable, but I have a whole house stuffed with all kinds of things created by many patented technologies. Yet I can do whatever I like with it.
As soon as the model is exported to polygons & textures it's the same as everything else on the web and totally not unique except for the process of creating it which you have a license for.

Companies are free to apply conditions to the use of their software and so they do.
Breaking those conditions allows them to take action accordingly, which may end with various consequences for the person in question who broke the conditions. Often these conditions or disclaimers are purely to heavily discourage one to act otherwise.
If you agree with the penalty then all is "fine" and you have played their game along.
However, it remains to be seen how valid the rules of that game are.
Rules/conditions need to meet conditions of various laws to be valid.

A simple "you agreed to the conditions when buying the software" argument is not valid and the whole story, simply because they might not be within the boundaries of existing laws.
So, if you disagree and make a case then the conditions will need to pass scrutiny of EU laws as well (since E-on is EU based).

There's a guy here in The Netherland who is specialized in these kind of things and has a blog where you can ask these things. Might be interesting to ask, just for the sake of knowing.
I'm not planning on selling anything at the moment or in the near/mid-distant future, but am rather curious to know.