Landscape/Scenery App Recommendations

Just info: be aware of some plug-in developer already leaving the Maxon boat due their new licence models.

Cheers
Frank
Thanks Frank for the heads up. I hadn’t heard about any plugin developers leaving. I have heard a lot of long time end users not being happy about it. They’ve done away with MSA as well.

A lot of them are talking about possibly switching to Blender now. Octane just released their own version of Blender 2.8 that is free to use, but only allows 1 GPU. Not all features are finished yet and it’s Windows only for now. Otoy says they release an OS X and Linux versions eventually.

Do you have any specifics on which developers are talking about leaving? I’d appreciate any info you have.

I got the studio version at a big discount and paid for it with a few freelance jobs. But didn’t have any great intention of updating every year. A lot of people on C4dcafe still using versions that go back to R12 and earlier. C3d is still more fun to use. C3d snapping works a lot better to me.
 
Prime isn't anymore (I once almost bought that a few years ago, but didn't care for the renderer). Their new system sucks big time because it's more expensive then usual when they do the switch to rentware.

But still C4d will not go away. It's very capable software, very wide spread (for a while it seemed to dominate the market from what I read), and to jump the boat is always a very big step. On a professional level it seems to take a year to get fully into the new software and it's special capabilities (while you can work on a lower level from day one and be productive). And all the plugins, the training, all that is a big investment. Of course they will loose users to blender, no doubt about that, but C4d will stay important and still wide spread. So most developers will keep at it, at least for a while. It's certainly the bigger market than quite a few other 3d packages (like lightwave & modo).

What really irks me, Maxon got the Intel denoiser which seems darn good, (almost?) on the same level as nvidia, while the AMD denoiser ... well, it's no match for the two others (they have different algorithms, yes, but somehow to me the result looks in most cases not better than what can be done with a little blurring in photoshop, sometimes even worse). That makes it even more interesting for Mac Users. And Maxon has gone Metal. While the future of blender on future MacOSes is still unclear (blender foundation will not do that conversion).

As an aside, Otoy is probably not so happy about Maxon buying Redshift (with that integrated you don't need Octane anymore).

And the hyped Blender 2.8 seems to have a big impact on the whole market, for example with autodesk selling a cheap Indie version of Maya and 3dsmax (250 $ each, available only in english speaking countries; it's just a test drive. But one has to make sure to cancel automatic renewal, because that will be the full price version).

There will be other changes, some other packages going cheap maybe, others going very expensive because they seem to believe that's not worth the effort anymore to deliver to the 'budget-customers' who (in their opinion) will jump the ship anyway sooner or later. They concentrate on those who need more than blender delivers and can pay the price. (I really fear that in 10, 20 years or so we will have the choice between free or very cheap stuff (and not that great) or wonderful things at crazy prices, while everything in between could vanish).

And every firm has announced some exciting news for their software, new plugins, new this, new that. At the moment there seems to be a big movement in the market, the traditional 3d developers not so sure, how they should handle the situation of a very changing market that's actually growing.

About Vue: the Creator solution doesn't allow export and has a render size up to 4k, which makes it useless for me (but last time I looked, even that was quite expensive. Now it's reasonable again).

So I believe the market is changing very fast at the moment, all a bit unsure, all a bit changing, and if you need something new related to 3d, be that hardware or software, in my opinion you should try to wait a little bit (and maybe be prepared to act fast when you get a bargain).
 
@Swizl

About Xfrog: The free models I have are great, no question about that. But those samples are each more than a million polys each, big textures, too, which somehow makes a forrest a bit difficult.

Forest on the other hand looks very promising. I really like their showcase.

Whatever you'll decide, please keep us informed and make sure to show some of your work (or at least some tests). Maybe you can export something for Cheetah, too.
 
@Swizl

About Xfrog: The free models I have are great, no question about that. But those samples are each more than a million polys each, big textures, too, which somehow makes a forrest a bit difficult.

Forest on the other hand looks very promising. I really like their showcase.

Whatever you'll decide, please keep us informed and make sure to show some of your work (or at least some tests). Maybe you can export something for Cheetah, too.

I may post something at some point, but I try to avoid posting anything here that didn't have C3d somewhere in the pipeline. Martin doesn't really like it when other 3d apps are promoted here.
 
I'm not sure if this will help.
I sincerely don't want to post anything I shouldn't.
This forum means a lot to me and I respect Martin and all of you.
Sometimes I get confused as to the limitations.

I imported this free tree from Xfrog into Cheetah 3D.
I am in the process of making some changes to it:
a) repositioning some of the branches and leaves.
b) deleting and adding certain branches, twigs and leaves
c) parenting certain leaves and twigs to their respective
branches
I still have more changes to make. (I have a lot of projects started and none of them complete)

My intensions are to make the branches with their parented twigs and leaves sway in the wind by using an ik handle on some of the branches. I've experimented with cylinders representing branches.

My Best to You
Jeanny
 

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Thanks pegot!:)
I must admit the way I was doing it was quite tedious.
I will check out ngPlant and give the tread you referred to a good look.

My Best to You
Jeanny
 
Jeanny one more thing about ngPlant. There is a site where you can download a lot of premed trees and plants for it so you may not have to create anything from scratch. I don't remember what it is at the moment but a little searching should reveal it.
 
@Jeanny:
Concerning the limitations. As Swizl pointed out, Martin understandably doesn't like it when something gets posted that has nothing to do with Cheetah. If Swizl would show us what he creates in C4d using some plugin, that would be the case.

If you on the other hand download some model or create a model in another software and do render it in Cheetah, this is no problem. The days are long over where everybody tried to model everything him- or herself. It's common even for hardcore professionals to use some stuff that's coming from 3rd parties. So any 3d app that would only show stuff that the users modeled themselves would have a poor gallery indeed (i. e. small). That said, with the exception of plants, I have a (stupid) tendency to do everything myself ...

So render away with your trees (be that xfrog, ngPlant or whatever) and show us what you got.

@pegot:
I tested the webversion of ngPlant. I changed an downloaded a birch as obj. It was very small in mb size (2,8) but the quality is rather low (which can be expected of such a small file). For a forest in the background this could be a good solution, though (especially in connection with replicators one could create quite impressive forests). The tree in the preview looked much better than that what was actually downloaded (at lest to me).

Does the full version give you the possibility of better quality as export? (I try to download as few apps as possible).
 
Hasdrubal: It's been a while since I played around with ngPlant. I don't remember any quality differences between the online and downloadable version. Quality seemed acceptable for my purposes.
 
@ uncle808us,pegot and Hasdrubal
You and the rest of the Forum are the BEST!
Without your continued encouragement and technical help I wouldn't have gotten anywhere.

Everyone Please take a bow!

I can't thank you enough.

My Best to all of you
Jeanny

P.S The picture of the curry tree is a screen shot of a Cheetah3D Render of the tree I imported from xfrog and made changes to in C3D.
 
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