There has been a lot of questions regarding tree generation on this forum recently. First off this is what attracted me to Vue, was the lovely trees. I have purchsed the extra vegetation package, and have learned a few of the tricks from the locals here in the forum on how to squeeze additonal trees out of the existing ones, but my question is this. I mean I currently own an old copy of Tree Druid ($99.00 U.S.), I have looked at Tree Onyx Pro ($500.00 U.S.), and I am currently playing with Xfrog 3.21 ($200.00 - $300.00 U.S.), add to that Bryce 5 came with a Tree Lab(?). With so much interest in tree production, has anyone considered making something either in the form of a tree generator for Vue, or at least a large library of trees in Vue's Solid Growth format on a CD ROM? I mean there are those of us ready to throw anywhere from $200.00 - $500.00 for this kind of thing. I myself would rather have the Vue Solid Growth trees over the large obj files that the the stand alone programs turn out. What I am hinting at is that there seems to be a market for this. JAS

The only thing about Solid Growth JAS is that it is E-on software's own technology and, understandably, they aren't telling how it's done ;). The rest of us cannot make any different trees using Solid Growth...that is E-on's and E-on's alone. Laurie

Yup, we can be creative with what we've got, but we can't make completely new species with SolidGrowth. I think it's a cool idea, JAS, but we don't really get many new species from E-on now (version 4 and there's only about 30 available). I'm not sure I'd want 'em working on building up a CD collection instead of adding more to what's currently available. (Gads, my grammar sounds like Bloodsong's. Did that make any sense??) ;)

Jas, I totally agree! Either E-On should release a big amount of new Solid Growth trees (cold climate stuff) or implement a "Solid Growth-tree Lab" so that the community can make trees on their own. I am just also considering the Onyx Tree Pro or Xfrog. Worldbuilder is of course also an option...probably even better value for the money considering all the lovely things you can do with it besides making trees! Jas: what have you found out about the difference between Onyx and Xfrog? Any recommendations? Varian: If I understand you correctly you do not want E-On to spend time on doing trees rather than implement new features in Vue? Well, if they implement a new tree-lab then I guess everyone will be happy! Enjoy Sunshine in Life / Ole

Hi Obi Van, I have not had the chance to use Tree Onyx as they do not have a demo as Xfrog does. Onyx is more expensive up front, but the program comes with around 300 differnt plants, Xfrog comes with 60. You can purchase additional tree types from them for around a $100 (U.S.). In the end you have about $500 (U.S.) in all with both programs. Xfrog doesn't have too steep of a learning curve, and the end result is lovely. The same could be said of renders that I have seen done with Tree Onyx products. The problem is the staggering size of the files compared to Vue's native tree format. So the point I am trying to make is that if I am going to spend $100 - $200 for 30 some odd trees for Vue, I would like to obtain them in Vue's format. Of course the atvantage of using either Xfrog or Onyx is that you could use the models in other apps as well. Varian, your grammar is just fine. You came through loud and clear. JAS

I would have to agree that I'd like to see afew more types of tree and bush and flower shapes made by E-on, and it really surprises me that they don't release new ones more often. There is however a great deal that can be done with the existing ones, which is cool. I had the XFrog demo and exported all the trees for use in Vue, but I really don't like using them...WAY too many polygons, and an XFrog tree will take 5 times longer to render in Vue than a Solid Growth tree will.

That's the problem with mesh trees. Many of them look wonderful, but it's just far too many bytes and polys to use them regularly. I've got Tree Druid and TreeMaker, and I much prefer stretching, bending, distorting the SolidGrowth to have "new" ones to work with. I think JAS has already seen my tutorials on reshaping Vue trees, but in case anyone else is interested, it's to be found here: http://www.varian.net/dreamview/dreamtools/vue/ in the Explorations section. :)