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Author Topic: Forest Pro - Unity exporter  (Read 528 times)

MI3393

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Forest Pro - Unity exporter
« on: June 23, 2022, 12:19:05 PM »
Hi Guys,

I used your Unity exporter last year and it was EXTREMELY helpful in a project I was creating. Some of the exported animation sequences I created from Unity were broadcast on National TV here.

I am trying to use this process again in a new project using Unity 2021.2.11f1

I am presently using Forest Pro 7.3.1

I was using the "foresttounityscript101.zip" file for the importer - is this the latest version, and are there any improvements with the latest Forest Pro ?

I was doing some super quick tests with a large forest (using  low poly objects) and it took about 5 minutes to import into Unity. I was using Arnold as the shader - will this cause any problems ?

Also, is it possible to use Forest Pro to scatter the tree objects when they are setup for Level Of Detail ( https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/creating-lods-in-3ds-max-for-unity-1# ) - they are different LODs in a Group ?

I see you mentioned there was not much feedback on the Unity importer. I will be doing a lot of projects in the future where the ability to export my Forest objects from my 3DS Max scenes will be a massive time saver, and keep consistency between rendered and real time outputs. So, adding my voice to say I appreciate the Unity package and would love to see it supported and developed.

D.

Paul Roberts

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Re: Forest Pro - Unity exporter
« Reply #1 on: June 24, 2022, 10:09:11 AM »
Hello,

First of all thanks for the positive feedback about the Unity exporter for Forest Pack - we're really pleased to hear that you found it useful and it's great to hear it made it to a broadcast!

The exporter hasn't been updated since the version you have, so it would behave the same in latest FP versions as the release you are using. This includes LODs which are not currently supported I'm afraid.

We just ran some quick tests here to check import times and in Unity 2021 a sample scene teapot with 20k items needed about three minutes to import. So your reported import times seem normal. There are no improvements over running the same test in Unity 2018. I guess it's the time needed by Unity to generate their instances. Arnold materials shouldn't make a difference because the exporter only really concerns itself with geometry.

I've passed on your post to the team to register your interest in the continued development of the exporter for Unity. Please feel free to let us know how you get on as your project continues.

All the best and thanks again!
Paul
Paul Roberts
iToo Software