GrowFX workflow

[EI3056]

Hey,

in "Ask iToo January" Paul showed the use of GrowFX, which I find very interesting. I´m thinking about integrating the plugin into my workflow, but just can´t decide yet.
I was hoping Paul or someone with GrowFX knowledge can share their experience when using it in an actual project.

Because the trial version is pretty limited, it´s hard to test actual performance.
So my main question would be, is it possible and adviseable to use GrowFX for the majority of the trees and scatter them with forest pack?
Or would we need to convert the GrowFX-Object to mesh for better performance?
Are a lot of GrowFX-objects in the scene going to noticable slow down viewport performance and/or opeing/saving times compared to using VrayProxys?

Looking forward to your replies and insight.

@Paul
thanks for all the awesome tutorials.
I have watched every single one of them and they are all amazing!

[Paul Roberts]

Hi,

Thanks for the kind words about the tutorials, Watching them all is quite a feat! It means a lot to know people find them helpful.

Regarding GrowFX, you may indeed see some performance hits simply because GrowFX will need to build the trees before they are sampled by Forest Pack. Depending on the complexity of the plants this can take a little time. If the whole scene was GrowFX objects, these times have the potential to add up. There are workarounds though, collapsing to a mesh is one option as you mention, another would be to try GrowFX's built-in Cache tools to would reduce the build times.



To be honest I haven't tested GrowFX Cache performance vs VRay proxies. Even if it does turn out the proxies are faster. you can still use the same sampling trick for scattering variations demoed in the Q&A using an animated V-Ray proxy. You could build the GrowFX object in a separate max file and update any referenced proxies quite easily by resaving.

The fun of GrowFX for me is being able to model and animate my own plants, something that's not easy any other way. If plant modelling is of interest, and you want to stay in 3ds Max, then I don't think there's currently a better option than GrowFX.

I hope that helps, please let me know if you have any further questions.

Cheers!

Paul

[EI3056]

Hey Paul,
thanks for the repy and explanation!
I guess I will try it, as soon as I have some time to spare.