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

[Walli]

I guess that at some point you will be able to share those plants, as long as you do it via Cornucopia. AFAIK it is already possible to give away other  freebies, so this probably also applies to TPF.

[TheBadger]

We have fixed a lot of issues with the way plants are exported from Plant Factory. At this point, we would like to hear your perspective on these exports.
Please understand that some issues are related to format limitations or importer flaws in other applications (e.g. the Modo FBX importer is wacky and currently being rewritten by Luxology). Of course, we would like to make sure that there is a path that works for all applications.
Please post in this topic your findings about Plant Factory exports (please note that Quad support is not expected in the short term, so no need to report on this). For maximum efficiency, please provide a precise description of your issue with, if possible, very simple examples. Thank you.

So it seems E-on is aware of issues and is dealing with them.
Also, there is some indiction that the restrictions we have been talking about may change slightly. But like before, its just a feeling I have based on what Im reading.
It does appear though, that e-on has not made final decisions on some issues yet.

OSX Beta version is really sluggish and hard to be patient with. Looking forward to the next update.

Dose anyone have any new plants to post? I do love to look at em'

[Bluestorm]

@ Badger

No news from me, I am afraid. The weather is simply too good to be inside Thanks for the compliment.

@ Jan

I am happy that you like it. Coming from you, the XFrog expert, I value this comment quite a bit By the way, your XFrog tutorials are also somewhat applicable to the Plant Factory, the concept is pretty similar. Your tutorials helped me a lot in the past and still do now

Hi Daniel (Bluestorm),

What a most interesting read about your Chamomile!

I would love to see it in action in TPF.

"Publishing" parameters, that's what you're refering to isn't it?

For the ones who wonder what it's about, it allows you to create a kind of macro where you can control a significant amount of your plants properties through a simplified interface with a couple of to be adjusted parameters. Right, Daniel?

The DRM is really annoying.
I wonder if you could sell it for $0.01?
What's the bottom price allowed?

Hi Martin,

sorry for not replying earlier. I had my final exams at university until last Monday and did not have time for anything. I am done now and looking forward to a great summer vacation

Regarding the freebie, offering something for free on C3D is not a problem. There are in fact a lot of freebies to be found. However, you need to become a "broker" so that you can add your stuff to the store. If you simply want to offer something that you are satisfied with, this is a lot of bureaucracy to deal with.

Anyways, you are correct about your macro comparison. I attached a screenshot from the plant that shows the node network and my custom made interface I plan on doing a tutorial on how to create this kind of control as soon as the weather happens to be bad

[TheBadger]

Final release is out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8cIjMQJHeQ

A tut
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzjAy1EbQvU

[alessandro]

I bought it at pre-release time and I must admit it's one the worst applications I've ever used. The OBJ export quality is so bad (probably planned to be that way) that the exported plants are unusable if you want to further refine or style those in ZBrush or else. Also, at least on OSX the interface is so slow that can be hardly used, and it crashes very often.
After leaving Vue, now with TPF I'm totally done with eon.

[Bluestorm]

Sorry to hear about the instability on Mac. I can only report good things about the Windows version. It became a lot more stable with each new prerelease and I barely have had any crash since PR6. Export works ok for me, but I also don't plan on editing a plant further after exporting it. So I can't comment on that.

What's not working properly is the association with Vue, but that's a Vue issue. There appears to be a memory leak somewhere when importing complex TPF plants. I hope this gets fixed quickly.

Still need to try to export a plant to Terragen. I will report the results.

Edit: Turning off shadows speeds up the preview considerably. Maybe you should try that, Alessandro.

Martin, Michael, what are your experiences?

[mhaze]

I have installed but not had time to use the final release.  Going on holiday soon too.  TPF has great potential but.... Like alot of other eon stuff just misses being great. I think the whole texturing and uv mapping which has been ported over from vue is poor and therein lies its weakness.  The modelling side is excellent even if it is ripped off! but uv mapping is awful and I find texturing a major pain.

[TheBadger]

Haven't installed the final. Im on OSX

I can tell you that I did open and attempt to navigate the UI of each update. As I wrote earlier The initial beta on OSX was utterly useless. However, Each update did show a functional improvement. Until the last update before final release when navigating the UI became very "normal".

I will download the final release today and do one of the tuts. If I am able to make a tree of nice detail and quality, and open it in both Maya and Terragen, well, then that will be that. I'll report back.

[zaxxon]

I'm sitting on the fence at present regarding which tree creation software to buy. I was hoping y'all would be my guides (guinea pigs?), but it seems to be a pretty mixed bag at the moment regarding The Plant Factory.  Speedtree 7 previewed (future release) at Siggraph last month with the announcement of subdivision surfaces. I queried via the Speedtree Forum whether that option would be included in Speedtree Studio  ($895), the answer was that the product announcements are pending at a later date.  Hmmm... So the entry level of TPF is $495, with an upgrade to TPF Studio another $500 ($995). The entry level of Speedtree (Architect) is also $495, with an upgrade to Speedtree Studio of $400 ($895). The functionality and pricing levels between the two products are similar. The problem is which Company do you want to hook up with, and which product is going to prove the better for use and value.  Speedtree is a small Company (only 5 folks per the online info) that has already achieved spectacular success both in the Game Industry and the Motion Picture Industry, their Forum (while not as active as Planetside's) seems responsive and helpful. E-on is...well, it's E-on. I agree with mhaze about the modeling in TPF seeming a bit 'derivative'. Here's a couple of photo's from twitter of Speedtree 7's subdivision surfaces, which to me are drool worthy. If ST7 Studio can deliver quads like that then I'm onboard, if it's only their high-end realtime app ($4995) then not so much (although in honesty the high-end package does come with a stunning and growing set of trees).

[Bluestorm]

One thing I can tell you for certain is that there is no quad export in TPF. E-on said that they're working on it since it was requested by many users, but it will take quite some time because it wasn't originally planned at all. I'd expect this to be a feature of TPF 2. As I said, I am not bothered by it because I don't edit the plants any further outside of TPF, but I can clearly see that this is might be an issue for other people. Steve Bell said somewhere in the e-on forum that the way the exporter is meant to work is to create as few polygons as possible to keep resources down for complex trees. So that's why there is no quad support yet and why the exported models have irregularly sized polygons.

That Speedtree screenshot sure does look fantastic and it would be great if we got something similar in TPF in the future.

What sets it apart IMO is the option to create random variations of a plant with the click of a button and the ability to build custom interfaces for aging, seasonality etc. That's the selling point for me.

I can't give you any recommendation whether Speedtree is better or worse. I've never tried it. However, I also own XFrog (both standalone and the plugin for C4D) and I could never really get into it. It was too mathematical for me with all the curves and splines. Even though the concept of TPF is very similar, I personally find it to be much more user friendly than XFrog. To be fair, having a large background in Vue helped me a lot because there were a lot of things that I didn't need to learn totally from scratch. I say you should wait for the trial version which is supposed to be released within the next two weeks and then see for yourself which software you'll like best.

[Bluestorm]

Something new...

A pansy, comaptible with Age and Health.

[zaxxon]

Wow! Very sweet. That appears to be a very complex layout. The FREE Plant Factory PLE has just been released and I'm looking forward to giving it a try.

http://www.plantfactory-tech.com/download/

[Bluestorm]

Actually, the plant geometry itself is quite simple (the green lines in the graph). The blue lines and all the other nodes connect various plant parameters to the age and health sliders so that the flower reacts to both. If I hadn't implemented these two features, the whole plant would probably consist of about 10-12 nodes.

[Grassynoel]

I think for the money this is much more fun. It's free and amazing.

http://vimeo.com/68195050#

~Glenn

[TheBadger]

Its only free if you have an iPad. Otherwise its really pricey
But yeah, that looks like a good soft!

There was some talk about it in a thread called "trees" here in open. I downloaded the app even though I dont have an iPad, just in case I decide to get one.

Soft like that almost makes buying the device worth it. I have been thinking about getting out of my smart phone contract and just getting a simple mobile phone and using the savings to pay for the pad.

If you have used treeSketch you should post some of your trees!

Still haven't had the time to play with TPF like I want to.