https://www.thegrove3d.com
I have seen something about this before. Looks really good. Have you used it, René?
here's the demo reel
https://youtu.be/5z7f62T-rUM
109.00 euros till Nov 5th....wish they had a try out version but didn't see one.
An attractive price. Looks to me to be primarily Blender based. The 3DMax interaction was pretty limited though, which is my DCC app. The "Scatter" tool in whichever app seems like a funky way to distribute branches (from a Speedtree user's eye). But I've not used the app. The images look really good though and his assets are pretty nice, and reasonably priced. If I was a Blender user I'd definitely add the app to my toolkit.
If this was stand alone software, I would have considered looking into it.
Problem I've got with The Grove is the one I've always had - there is no 'try and buy' or evaluation edition. So a decision to purchase would be based on a very small number of images posted on the web site and a lot of text proclaiming how great it's going to be. Elsewhere, I've had two bad experiences with no-trial software and I'm not willing to put myself in that position again.
That to can be another issue and yes, more image examples would be an ideal consideration on there part.
Quote from: masonspappy on October 22, 2016, 04:26:48 AM
Problem I've got with The Grove is the one I've always had - there is no 'try and buy' or evaluation edition. So a decision to purchase would be based on a very small number of images posted on the web site and a lot of text proclaiming how great it's going to be. Elsewhere, I've had two bad experiences with no-trial software and I'm not willing to put myself in that position again.
That was my beef in my post re: the demo reel..
Quote from: bobbystahr link=topic=22298.msg224867#msg224867 date=1477148033
That was my beef in my post re: the demo reel..
/quote]
Great minds gripe alike. :)
Quote from: masonspappy on October 22, 2016, 01:54:10 PM
Quote from: bobbystahr link=topic=22298.msg224867#msg224867 date=1477148033
That was my beef in my post re: the demo reel..
/quote]
hee hee hee
Great minds gripe alike. :)
Quote from: masonspappy on October 22, 2016, 04:26:48 AM
Problem I've got with The Grove is the one I've always had - there is no 'try and buy' or evaluation edition. So a decision to purchase would be based on a very small number of images posted on the web site and a lot of text proclaiming how great it's going to be. Elsewhere, I've had two bad experiences with no-trial software and I'm not willing to put myself in that position again.
Exactly.
I think i used the free version of Terragen for 2 years or so before i bought it.
Although it looks like an interesting software especially given the price.
Quote from: Dune on October 21, 2016, 12:16:01 PM
I have seen something about this before. Looks really good. Have you used it, René?
Sorry for the delayed reaction. No, i haven't used it because it's a Blender add on. (I am considering learning Blender although i hate learning yet another program.) I was struck by the quality of the images and €109,00 seems a bargain although you have to purchase the twigs separately for €9,60, witch seems a little odd. There have been some post and cool images about using the Grove on the Modo forum: http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/topic.aspx?f=4&t=115966&page=2
Surely if you just install Blender, this is worth it?
It looks excellent. I'm certainly interested in that. The results look phenomenal.
I have no idea how well you need to know Blender to be able to use the Grove. I would like to find out but as Masonspappy stated, there is no trial version.
It's not too difficult to get trees growing in blender. Open blender, install the addon, append a twig and start growing a tree by adding a Grove4 mesh. Even with the default setup the trees look pretty good.
The problem is exporting these trees to Terragen. The twig system is great if you use it with the Particle System. But as far as I see this method is not transferable to Terragen. You will have to grow the tree with object instances of the twigs. And that makes blender extremely slow and it is consuming a lot of RAM (>10GB for a pretty simple 8 year old tree).
If someone knows a way how to use the Particle System approach in Terragen, I would be very interested. Without this I cannot recommend Grove4 for Terragen users.
Mmmm 10GB is pretty large for a basic tree.
I have to apologize. As usual, the biggest problems are sitting close to the keyboard. :-[
I think there has been another problem with blender the last time I tried to export a tree (it crashed during the render I did before growing the tree and I didn't reboot). I tried it again now and I have to revoke some parts of my last post.
I grew a tree with Grove 4 (24 years) and I did this with object instances. Blender is still getting slow and the export is taking a few minutes, but it took only 3GB of RAM this time. The obj file itself is approx. 1.5 GB in size. Importing into Terragen is possible (see attachment), so I would say Grove 4 is useable at least for hero trees. The interaction with other trees/objects while growing is really nice. After this second try I would say: It's really worth a look!
Sorry for posting something before verifying the results.
1.5 gig? For one tree? I don't think that's a very workable situation. I'd go for XFrog or Speedtree, even for a few hundred dollars/euros more.
Yes, the obj file is very large. In blender it's much better because you can use the Particle System. But as I mentioned before this feature won't work in Terragen. If you import the tree that is grown with the Particle System you will get only the bare tree without twigs and leaves. :(
As Ulco said, XFrog and Speedtree are the better choices for Terragen, although the Grove is a very nice Blender addon.
Rumburak, when you use Blender particle system, do you convert everything to mesh before exporting?
Either that or you can use the 'Object Instances' setting while growing the tree.