Landscaping With MR

[3devendra]

Hi all,

Can anybody tell what are the best landscaping tools and best optimized models of trees and shrubs with the best results to use with mental ray?

Cheers
Devenera

[Seeda]

Hi Devendra

The only plugin i know is the max VUE plugin, this is for landscaping, trees etc. And it works with mental ray.

Can I use MR final gather and GI with Vue 6 xStream?
Yes. When final gather is on, MR uses the Vue atmosphere as a skylight. The color and intensity of the skylight is further affected by the Vue GI settings. This ensures a perfect match between the Vue environment and the indirect lighting. However, xStream gives you the option to disconnect MR from the Vue GI settings, if you wish to control them separately.

http://www.e-onsoftware.com/support/f.a.q/?page=3

[JeffPatton]

I personally haven't tried this (yet), but it might be another option worth exploring: http://www.gugila.com/

[3devendra]

Thanks seeda and Jeff Patton

I have tried gugila, but they dont provide any tree library with that its just scattering tool kind, what i want is like the x-frog provieds but x-frog are very heavy to render. I never tried with Vue...


Cheers
Devendra

[vizualizr]

I've been fighting this battle for years, as our office's roots are in Landscape Architecture (my degree included).

Xfrog has beautiful trees, but you're right - they're chunky.

Even though they're billboards and not the real deal, we get great luck for background trees with ForestPro from Itoosoft (www.itoosoft.com), though I haven't quite figured out the way their material and mental ray play together yet (it's supposed to)

Hope that helps a bit.

[3devendra]

hi vizualizr,

thanks for the info itoo seems good deal, i will try with Forestpacklite, but again it seems its only billboards :(, but really good for background tree or some real forest look!!




Cheers
Devendra

[Camby1298]

Onyx Plants is the way to go, along with its TreeStorm Package. Modifying ur plants and with using placeholders n mentalRay make it killer package.

When will Mental Images develop a "Vray Proxies" like feature 4 MR?

[SmokingHot2003]

I've love to check out Vue. It looks like an awesome program, plus it got an PDE you can download and study the program.

I ain't sure about Onyx Plants, since it doesn't have trail version for me to download so I don't really wanna take the risk by buying it and find that I don't really like it.

I use trees/plants from Evermotion.org and they're pretty chunky also. Not sure if its' as chunky as Xfrog.

Yeah I'd like to see a similar feature in MR like Vray Proxies..

[mmikee]

We use both Vue Xstream and Onyx here. Vue works well for far off trees and such, but not so great when close up. I
really like Onyx. I like the fact the trees can be exported
with real geometry leaves, not opacity mapped planes. Makes rendering alot faster.

Regards,
Mike

[Spacelord]

Hi Mike,
Not sure if you know but I use to have really slow render times with cutout map until I discovered blur should be turned down to 0.01 and it decreased render times dramatically.

cheers

[3dnet]

can you specify more exactly what you mean about "blur to 0.01" !?

best regards

[Spacelord]

In the bitmap rollout theres an option under UV Offset tiling called blur. Sorry I cannot do a screen grab at the moment my photoshop machine is getting repaired.

cheers

[3dnet]

you can try to turn "filtering none" .

i think the result is the same...

but have you the certainty that a "less blur (0.01) " map in the cutout channel render´s faster than a "smooth map" ?

best regards

[3devendra]

Hi 3dnet,

I tried with filter to none, but when i animate my cam it its flickers, but when used with blur to 0.01, it did not flicker,
so i feel the blur is the better way to go...



Cheers
Devendra :)

[3devendra]

Hello bullseye,

how are you? am very busy with some tight deadlines, so not able to work.. will be back with some more rendering!!!


Cheers
Devendra :)

[nisus]

I've love to check out Vue. It looks like an awesome program

Yes, it's a GREAT program and MR-linked (haha VRay users!)... BUT all this great is of no use in arch.viz.: there is no way to easily 'link' the scenes... VUE is especially good for background-plates in movies, but for real 'design' it cannot be used... There is no backwards workflow possible, meaning: one cannot place trees exactly on a plan etc. The sun cannot be linked to a MR-daylight system etc... i.e. lot's of problem, not useful 'yet' (!).

rgds,

nisus

ps: we were really disappointed: saw VUE 6 at siggraph 2006 and found it the best 'discovery' on the floor by FAR!!! Been waiting for it's release since october 2006 till february 2006, bought it one day after it's release, but never used it in production... This year I talked to the CEO of e-on about this... (at Siggraph 2007)... we'll see ,-) working on it!