Try out
www.3dcafe.com
I have used that site alot .You can download them as DXF or some other format that you have to import them in to 3dstudio max or whatever you use.

xrog
natfx
onyx
got3D

They ain't cheap and the poly count of one tree could easily be more than your entire scene. But if you just want something basic and free - not realistic, then you can look at 3Dcafe.com or other free sites.

To do nice trees in an animation you need some powerhouse computers. Options are bitmap trees or rpcs, but those have big draw backs as well.

Trees are a HUGE obstacle in the world of 3D.

Hmmm... the stuff in the Archvision gallery is horrendous. But I guess it is fast.

Dont knock the rpc stuff. You can always download the Photoshop Plugin and Just put the in there. Then you can adjust all the hues and saturations plus make them transparent if needed.

I am knocking the gallery. And will continue to.

Arc vision is HORRIBLE - I'd NEVER use that crap.

Model your own trees with xfrog or just "buy" xfrog and the xfrog plants cds...

or www.turbosquid.com

try the dosch plants cd s or amap software which grows you a new tree at every time
very nice

there's also a free javascript treegen program called arbaro. Very high polygon counts, though, but it is controllable once you get the hang of it.

onyx, IMO is the best, but pricey.

doh, I was wrong. it's java, not javascript.

(for those of you who don't know, they're actually very very different things)

I have not liked Dosch stuff in the past. I know their first cars sucked, but the newer ones look good.


XTune for XFrog is decent, but really outdated. It's an additional program to lower the poly count. Pain in the ass, though, unless you have C4D (which XFrog is primarily written for).
Some models are spectacular, some too high poly even for still renderings (and I am on a dual 3.4).

I've heard great things about the new Onyx line. May consider buying it.

Both XFrog and Onyx (and NatFX) you can "grow" your trees, so you can animate the growth, etc., etc. (if you have a render farm, that is).


RPCs are great for quick stuff and probably most arhc offices that can't dedicate time to rendering well, but for professional stuff you just can't use it (been a few years since you could get away with that).

HOw do these so called, RPCs work? I've never seen them before. I saw something like it in the DS+R animation for the ICA and was curious how they did that, but now that I have seen RPCs, I think that's what they did.

The DS+R animation used green screens, not RPC.

You can manipulate Rhino plants. They have no polygonal faces. Their rendering meshes are created during the rendering process as they are procedural.

What, so DS+R sync-ed a video camera to the track of their animation? Like they do for movies? Sweet. Sounds expensive.

what you want are RPC's. the best place to find them are over any p2p software...like Limewire or Edonkey.

Camera tracking isn't the expensive part, but overall, yes, it's expensive. You can use helicopter footage and comp a model animation in and it looks perfect (really, I can barely tell when done well, and I look at renderings all day).

Blue/green screen is actually not outrageous for the simpler stuff (and I'll put my money on the 3D team strategizing to make it simple).

Anyone have a link? Anyone know who the 3D firm was that did it?

meant to say that it's the video footage that adds a tremendous amount, not the actual camera tracking (which requires a good program, like Boujou or PFTrack)