ForestPack 9 is out now, introducing the brand new ForestIvy plugin for creating climbing plants alongside many more useful new features and improvments.
New Features
- Added ForestIvy, a new plugin for generating ivy and many other types of climbing plants. Features include:
- 30 presets with high quality leaf scans
- Library browser to create and manage your own presets
- Custom presets can be added to the library from the scene in a couple of clicks.
- Brand new and bespoke super-fast multithreaded algorithm, no need to wait for growth - get instant feedback
- Combines hand drawing for artistic control combined with algorithmic growth for realism.
- Advanced leaf controls including several different growth patterns and heliotropism
- Leaf size based on branch age
- Ability to add layers of items growing on the stem for example leafs, flowers, berries etc.
- Use Forest Colour to randomize leaf textures
- Can be used without a surface for basic bushes and shrubs
- Intuitive controls for creating your own climbing plants
- Gravity and ground culling to make it possible to creating hanging plants and vines
- Viewport and render time instancing for effortlessly rendering hundreds of thousands of high poly assets (currently available for Arnold and V-Ray CPU)
- New Display->Point-cloud mode, more optimized for recent 3DS Max versions and modern GPUs (only Max 2017 and above).
- In classic point-cloud mode, the density of points was proportional to the distance of each Forest item to the camera which required a full redraw with each change on the viewport, triggering multiple updates to the GPU.
- With the new mode, the density of points is fixed (all Forest items have the same number of points), and the GPU is updated only when a Forest object is modified. In this way, the point-cloud is cached most of the time in the GPU, and doesn't need to be updated. This is much faster and more efficient.
- By default each Forest object is drawn using 250k points. As before, density can be changed using Display->Global/Local Density.
- We included several parameters in the configuration file (forestpack.ini) for fine tuning:
- cloudPointsByObject (default: 250000): number of points of each Forest object. Setting it to 0, reverts to the classic Point-cloud mode.
- cloudHitTestMaxPoints (default: 1000): maximum number of points used for hit-testing (to select items on viewport). You can reduce it, to improve hit-testing performance.
- cloudSubSelDensity (default: 300): percent of points for selected items on Custom Edit mode.
- cloudSubUnselDensity (default: 100): percent of points for unselected items on Custom Edit mode.
- For maximum performance, we recommend that you don't use points cloud with features that trigger a rebuild when the viewport changes. For example Camera->Enable on Viewport.
Improvements
- Added support of Edge Mode for V-Ray proxies.
- To use it, you must set proxy preview mode to whole full mesh.
- When using this mode, proxy is used just as a container of the geometry. Some parameters or features of the proxy object may have no effect.
- It requires a recent V-Ray version (tested with V-Ray 6), and is compatible with CPU mode only.
- Removed several pop ups and suggestions (such as Enable Camera Limits, Change to Display Proxy mode, etc.)
- Improved memory management when rendering animated objects.
- Previously all animated samples were stored in memory while rendering. This would exhaust the available memory when rendering heavy objects in long animations.
- Now old animated samples are deleted while rendering, keeping a limit of 10 gigabytes of memory for all samples of Forest objects.
- This limit can be modified with samplesCacheLimit in forestpack.ini. The value is defined in kilobytes. Setting it to zero disables the limit.
- Several improvements to the process of loading and resizing thumbnails in the Library Browser.
- Improved performance of Library Browser when loading multiple items using the same material library.
- Added icon to Library Browser.
- Distribution->Density->Draw Gizmo Corners is disabled by default.
- Improved use of mapping channels with Distribution Map:
- With Surface XY mode, Map Channel is no longer needed. The distribution map is evaluated for all channels of the surface.
- Surface UV mode is no longer limited to map channel 1. But multiple channels are not supported.
- Added option to move items from Geometry List to a ForestSet object.
- To use it, select items and use right click->Move to ForestSet.
- Randomize Stacked is moved from Surfaces to the Areas rollout.
- This option works also with stacked splines, not only surfaces.
- Added Areas->Separate Sub-splines.
- When enabled, each sub-spline is handled as a separate Area, ignoring the hierarchy within the spline.
- Use it combined with Randomize Stacked to create randomized distributions when using stacked splines.
- Default rollups order is changed to a more logical way: Geometry, Distribution, Areas, Surfaces, Transform, Items Editor, Camera, Material, Effects, Animation, Shadows, Display, General, About.
- Please note if you changed the default rollup order in 3DS Max at some time, that is stored permanently in the user's configuration (at C:\\Users\\\\AppData\\Local\\Autodesk\\3dsmax\\\\ENU\\en-US\\UI\\RollupOrder.cfg)
- Improved behaviour of Display->Max.Items when using Camera clipping.
- Improved stability with Corona Interactive Render and Forest Color.
- Display->Wireframe and Opacity options are removed.
- These are still available from Maxscript if you need them (wireframe and opacity parameters).
Fixes
- Fixed crash using Forest object in Custom Edit mode as excluded area.
- Fixed: ForestSet is not properly handled when cleaning the library layer from unused objects.
- Fixed: Area->Falloff is not computed correctly if General->Num.Threads is zero.
- Fixed: Material library is not properly loaded from Library Browser for some items.
- Fixed crash on 3DS Max close if Library Browser is opened without using any Forest object.
- Fixed: modifying item after loading from Library Browser affects properties of a different item.
- Fixed: Library Browser->Paths->Modify replaces paths backlashes (\\) by slashes (/).
- Please note this is a cosmetic issue only. Forest internally accepts both types of slashes, converting them when needed.
- Fixed: Library item attributes textColor and textBoxcolor have no effect.
- For compatibility reasons, these attributes are applied only when value is different from '#000000'.
- Fixed several issues moving/copying catalogs (Drag & Drop) in the Library Browser.
- Fixed: Library Browser dialog has no icon.
- Fixed: Distribution->Path->In Vertex Positions also adds items at interpolation steps.
- Fixed: Randomization of Particle Flow items is not consistent when using multiple events.
- This fix may change randomization of particle scenes created with previous Forest versions.
- Fixed crash rendering Alembic proxies with motion blur in V-Ray.
- Fixed rare crash loading Distribution Maps file ("index.dat").
- Fixed: Forest_pro.ForestPack.exportData interface doesn't work, returning always error code 2.
- Fixed incorrect scale/rotate values from Forest Tools->Exporter.