Any rendering speed advantage using Forest Pro vs. Scatter?

[timd1971]

I am considering purchasing Forest Pack Pro (FPP) but am comparing with Multiscatter, GroundWiz, Carbon Scatter... And Scatter modufier in max 2012.

Is there a major rendering performance using FPP or the other plugins over Scatter and or mental ray or vray proxies?  Or just overall specialized system for placing trees etc.  main concern here is rendering speed advantage?  I know trees, grass, pants etc have many small details.... So really in all the scenarios, is rendering speed about the same? Just main peed advntage is in the viewports via point clouds etc?

Thank you for the help!

Ps.... Any chance soon for 30% discount again i hear about?  I like GroundWiz and MultiScatter too.... So anything to help make a FPP would help greatly!  Thank you! 

[iToo]

We have not compared the rendering speed of Forest with other scattering plugins. The technique used would be similar, because all of them create native instances using the render engine. Anyways we use internally multiple caches and other tricks, to save memory and optimize the rendering resources. I don't know how the other plugins work.

But between using a scattering plugin and individual proxies, there are major advantages. Max is very slow handling thousands of items (both at viewport or rendering). With Forest you can easily scatter and render a million of trees (without proxies), this would not be possible using individual proxies.

Of course besides this you will find many benefits using Forest: parametric areas, procedural maps, clusters, library browser, camera clipping, points-cloud... well you can see it at the documentation.

We usually don't launch discount campaigns for our software. We prefer to keep the same offers all the year: volume discounts (as the second license at half-price) and 15% off purchasing RailClone or additional Forest licenses. Probably you saw this offer in HQ Plants (since 3dmentor make their own campaigns) or perhaps in other plugins.

[timd1971]

thank you for the reply.  Sounds good.

I am very close to buying Forest Pack Pro...but also still looking at Groundwiz and MultiScatter.

The biggest thing that scares me is the license system and reading from various sources it is causing with legitimate owners and non-legitimate owners.  I am reading that if the license system detects something wrong with a license, be it genuine or not, it converts the forests created, to "invisible" meshes and their is NO GOING BACK TO GET ALL THAT WORK BACK??  That would NOT be a good thing for us the client, maybe so for the developer, but NOT us the client with projects and $$$$$ at stake.

Is this problem in fact real among buying customers or not?  If so, is it fixed or will it be fixed?  I am looking for a system to start out with on the right foot and never have to worrry about down the road of a major nuisance like that.  ALso need peace of mind, that after a few years, I can open a file created, and the forest is still the same...  i guess the main reason I wish a forest program like this was built into 3ds max and part of it.  Plugins have a way of "locking" one in.

If the license system does decide to take liberty and ruin a file by converting all forest objects to invisible meshes for whatever reason.....  will we be able to get those "forests" back easily by contacting the developer for help...or have to in fact start from scratch?  I hope not.  I personally do NOT like software that does things like this and is actually DESTRUCTIVE.  In a way for protection or not....acts quite like a virus to me on my work.... and even paid for it do so?

Before deciding, please let me know if this is in fact true or not... as I have read about this here in this forum and also around other forums.  Thank you!

[iToo]

The only cases we have seen with this problem were due to:

a) The customer was using a warez version of the plugin.
b) He had the legitimate software, but used previously the warez version, and the software or the license were not correctly uninstalled.
c) The scene was created using the warez plugin. In this case was necessary to recreate the objects.

Once solved these problems, these customers had not more problems with the software.

As you understand, we cannot provide any guarantee if a customer uses software which has been altered, or it is not under our control. That is the risk that he is assuming for using it.

I hope everything is clear now. We will not reply more questions about this issue in a public forum. I will pleased to reply by e-mail if you have other doubts.

PD: Because the terms exposed above, in order to protect the privacy of the customers, i just removed from the forum all posts related to the licensing issues.

[timd1971]

thank you...that makes things a bit clearer!  Good to hear.  So shouldn't be any such problems then.

Thank you!