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Author Topic: Forest Pack Pro/Lite 5.0.5  (Read 22027 times)

Paul Roberts

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Forest Pack Pro/Lite 5.0.5
« on: April 11, 2016, 11:11:59 AM »

We are delighted to announce the release of Forest Pack 5 with a host of brand new features and fixes to improve speed, increase usability and make the plugin more flexible than ever. For a taste of what’s new, check out the comprehensive release notes and demo reel below.

Note 1: Forest 5.0.5 requires a license upgrade. See this Knowledge Base article for details.

Registered users of Forest Pack Pro can download Forest Pack 5 from their User Panel. For any question about this release, please use the Forum.


Forest Pro 5.0 Release Notes

New Features
  • Added support for V-Ray 3.3
    • Forest Pack 5 benefits of the render performance improvements of V-Ray 3.2 and greater. In our tests speed gains were between 40% to 100% depending of the scene.
    • V-Ray 1.5 and 3.0 are not longer supported. Currently supported V-Ray versions are 2.x, 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3.
    • Added a toolbar with shortcuts to: add FP object, add Forest LOD, Forest Tools and Forest Lister.
  • Added a new Forest Lister


    • This new tool simplifies the management of scenes that contain multiple Forest Pack objects.
    • It comprises a simplified interface allowing you to rename, enable/disable, hide/unhide, and select Forest objects, display useful information, and speed up editing properties.
    • For more details see the documentation.

  • Forest Effects

    • This new feature lets you to extend the functionality of Forest Pack by adding limitless possibilities for animation, random transform, colouring, etc.
    • Similar to a scripting engine, it's based on mathematical expressions which are applied to the Forest items.
    • Effects can be loaded from a from a library, importing them from individual files, or creating your own using expressions.
    • Exportable parameters and references are allowed, letting you to create an easy interface for end users.
    • See the documentation for full reference and examples.

  • Added Areas-]Edge mode for Mental Ray and Corona renderer.


    • These renderers require to use "Forest Edge" (a new procedural texture map) in the opacity slot of ALL materials used by the Forest Object.
    • Forest Edge has no effect when used with other render engines.
    • Added support for "Forest Edge" in the Material Optimizer, so it can be applied with a single click in your scene or material library
  • Distribution-]Diversity Map and Clusters now recognize multiple models with the same color ID, handling them as a group with their own Probability values.
    • To keep compatibility with existing scenes, this feature is applied only on new FP objects.
    • This feature is not compatible with Areas-]Select models. In this case, the previous behaviour is applied (using only the first color ID match).

  • Added new presets: Mulch and Rugs.

  • Added support for V-Ray motion blur and velocity channel with animated objects (both proxies and meshes).
  • Library presets can use nested Forest objects, but with several restrictions:
  • Nested objects must use only area splines, not surfaces or exclusion objects.
  • Be sure there are no duplicate names in custom objects or areas.
  • Added "Render quality" option to the library presets. Enables you to select simplified materials for faster render times.
    • Currently available only for V-Ray materials.
    • It works by modifying standard materials using Maxscript. For example, in V-Ray it replaces VRay2sidedMtl by VRayMtl.
    • You can add your own materials procedures by editing the function "updateLibMaterial" in forestlib.ms. Please ask us on the forum for more details.
  • Fixed Forest Color map names in Slate Editor.
  • ForestEdge's opacity texture is applied correctly in Corona Renderer.
  • Fixed distribution on Cluster using multiple items with same Color ID (new feature in FP 5, but bugged in previous version).
  • Added "copyMaterialFromObjects" parameter to forestpack.ini. Set it to zero to avoid that material is copied to Geometry-]Material when picking Custom Objects.
  • forestpack.ini can be found at C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsmax\[max version]\ENU\en-US\plugcfg folder.
  • Areas-]Falloff global parameters and Transform-]Probability curves are imported from library presets.
  • Added Maxwell materials for Lawns, Leaves, Meadows and Stones presets.
  • Auto generated materials are optimized, removing unused and duplicated materials. This is particularly useful for nested Forest objects.
    • If your materials require the previous behaviour, this feature can be disabled by setting optimizeAutomaterial=0 in forestpack.ini
  • Distribution-]Max.Density range is raised to 999.
  • All scattering limits (Distribution-]Max.Density, Display-]Max Items/Faces) can be disabled by setting the value to zero.
  • Default Distribution Map is changed to "dense".
  • Optimize Materials automatically replaces "Normal Bump" maps with VRayNormalMap.
  • Improved memory usage rendering animations with Mental Ray.
  • Max 9 to 2009 are not longer supported. Minimum version supported is Max 2010.


Fixes

  • Fixed 'Zoom extent' behaviour with selected items in Custom Edit mode.
  • Fixed: Forest LOD using Look-At target doesn't work without a camera assigned.
  • Fixed: Distribution-]Collision-]Radius affects to Edge mode, even with collision checking disabled.
  • Fixed continuous rebuild when using nested Forests with "Consolidate Materials" off.
  • Fixed crash with VRayClipper.
  • Improved hit-test viewport performance for mesh modes.
  • Fixed Mental Ray error using Animation-]Frame from Map.
  • Fixed random crashing bug rendering with Mental Ray in Max 2016.
  • Fixed solid color screen after cancelling a Corona render.
  • Fixed crash when navigating in viewport while Corona is rendering.
  • Fixed crash using Corona interactive with Forest Color.
  • Fixed duplicated IDs on Geometry list with Copy/Paste operations.
  • Geometry List-]Copy/Paste now copies the color ID correctly.
  • Fixed bug with Areas-]Object exclude-]Top limit.
« Last Edit: April 11, 2016, 11:21:54 AM by iToo »
Paul Roberts
iToo Software