I used Forest Pak Pro a few years ago. Had no problems. Upgraded to 6.23 recently. Installed on Max 2016 under Mental Ray. Watched the same boat in canal Parts 1,2,3 tutorial as a refresher. All makes sense, just like I remember. I have a mesh. I have grass 3D geometry. I select Itoo, then Forest Pro. From there, nothing is like the tutorial. Selecting the mesh does not auto distribute the template objects on the surface as a start.
I have to select my mesh plane with the '+' icon under Surfces. Area rollout will not let me do anything. I select 3D grass as custom object. No point representation of the grass distributes on the mesh. Dense image is pre-selected in Distribution and all options locked out. Poking around in the scene, I notice one pointcloud representation of the 3D grass appears off in space away from the mesh plane. If I zoom on it, it is a pointcloud version of one 3D grass object. It renders and looks like the grass. But there is no grass being distributed on the plane that under surfaces.
I understand the tutorial perfectly. What is happening as I launch Forest Pro does not match my previous experience nor what I see in the tutorials. At a complete loss. I really need to add some grass, trees and shrubs and start rendering. I only have this weekend to finish the project. It is a completed POV auto accident. I only need to add some foliage along the roadway and then I'm done. Not a good start. Anyone know what is going on?