garden Japanese Garden

[Miroslav Kovac]

Hello,

So here is the story. Japanese girl Kyoko is enjoying early morning in her secret garden, while drinking delicious cup of green tea. She is sitting in the big "tsukubai" (Japanese stone water basin) and admiring the beauties in her point of view.

 

This is my older work submitted for evermotion challenge "Secret Garden"   anyway I decided to use it as first post here in exlevel gallery

All growFX custom made plants by me.

 

[小饰X]

It looks great. It would be better to add more details!

[Miroslav Kovac]

Hello 小饰X,   you are right about details, this was my first work after I have understand a bit the UI of 3ds MAX and Corona renderer, I have been tight in deadline for this personal work for evermotion challenge competition, so this work was great as a starter for me and I will not work on it anymore,  although it can be improved much more. I am working on new garden projects (exteriors) which are my main focus of 3D work, as I am garden designer and botanist. I work mainly outside in the real gardens  for clients and family. I am still fighting with myself to better manage time infront of the computer and creating art in 3D.

 

So my main passion is to observe plants in nature and then try to replicate them the best as possible in this perfect tool Eduard and the Team are creating and maintaining for us creative geeks 

 

A lot of time takes creating your own assets for your ideas, here testing lantern for upcoming projects:

 

[小饰X]

Your work is excellent. Would you use other plant software? For example: speedtree?

[Miroslav Kovac]

Thank you for your kind words, I  have watched workflows of other vegetation softwares in the past, SpeedTree (more suitable for VFX/movies), Xfrog, PlantFactory (E-on Software) but was not convinced to use them. 

 

My observations from archviz forums regarding vegetation softwares (cgarchitect, corona-renderer, ronenbekerman, evermotion, etc.)

 

1. SpeedTree can be interesting for artists who have problem with imagination during creation process, because this software is more of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) pipeline, where you painting trunks, branches and everything directly in viewport and 3d space, you can create nice vegetation but I am not sure if it will be realistic enough.

2. GrowFX is considered as not as much user friendly on the forums of not so much experienced users because of very steep learning curve. You are expected to think as mathematician, because you driving curves, vectors, beziers during creative process which is not easy for everybody. Users are complaning about not available presets as starting point while creating trees for instance, they are not motivated to work from scratch and lack of discipline.

 

For me the growFX is powerhorse tool to achieve my design ideas of all vegetation. I will use all of my available time to learn as much as possible.

The main strenghts for me are:

1. CountRate tweaking for all created paths - most growFX users forget to use this parameter, but I think it is crucial to achieve realistic botanically correct vegetation. "Nature is perfect in its imperfection" 

2. Affect nodes to shape dependencies between paths and create belivable plant structure

3. Metamesh - perfect connection of meshes

4. Aftermesh - wind and growth modifiers the most realistic results compared to other plant softwares

And I can go on with very long list...

 

To succeed we are condemned to maximum performance in our creative vision, we need to practise, learn, set our bar higher everyday.

 

I wish to all growFX-ers a lot of creative vision, patience and not give up when problems occur, solutions will get in your way in reasonable time.

[小饰X]

You said it in great detail, which shows that you have a lot of knowledge in this area!
All work must depend on GrowFX, but I think GrowFX still has a lot of functions to improve!

[Miroslav Kovac]

Hello, yes indeed, growFX is still evolving and improving, the future will show, but introducing version 2.0 with nodes was a huge step ahead and I am really grateful for this very much, we can help Eudard and the rest of the coding Team to suggest them new features and other improvements while we testing and using growFX on daily basis.

[Gamundi0804]

On 11/18/2022 at 4:53 PM, Miroslav Kovac said:

Thank you for your kind words, I  have watched workflows of other vegetation softwares in the past, SpeedTree (more suitable for VFX/movies), Xfrog, PlantFactory (E-on Software) but was not convinced to use them. 

 

My observations from archviz forums regarding vegetation softwares (cgarchitect, corona-renderer, ronenbekerman, evermotion, etc.)

 

1. SpeedTree can be interesting for artists who have problem with imagination during creation process, because this software is more of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) pipeline, where you painting trunks, branches and everything directly in viewport and 3d space, you can create nice vegetation but I am not sure if it will be realistic enough.

2. GrowFX is considered as not as much user friendly on the forums of not so much experienced users because of very steep learning curve. You are expected to think as mathematician, because you driving curves, vectors, beziers during creative process which is not easy for everybody. Users are complaning about not available presets as starting point while creating trees for instance, they are not motivated to work from scratch and lack of discipline.

 

For me the growFX is powerhorse tool to achieve my design ideas of all vegetation. I will use all of my available time to learn as much as possible.

The main strenghts for me are:

1. CountRate tweaking for all created paths - most growFX users forget to use this parameter, but I think it is crucial to achieve realistic botanically correct vegetation. "Nature is perfect in its imperfection" 

2. Affect nodes to shape dependencies between paths and create belivable plant structure

3. Metamesh - perfect connection of meshes

4. Aftermesh - wind and growth modifiers the most realistic results compared to other plant softwares

And I can go on with very long list...

 

To succeed we are condemned to maximum performance in our creative vision, we need to practise, learn, set our bar higher everyday.

 

I wish to all growFX-ers a lot of creative vision, patience and not give up when problems occur, solutions will get in your way in reasonable time.

I think one big thing whit grow fx is the lower medium and advance learning content in places like youtube. You need to learn like the old way reading the manual. I say that because i have only 5 month and only i see some generic tutorials and the manuals are my principal friend. But with softwares like speedtree you have and extensive content with learning resources.

[Miroslav Kovac]

Hi Gamundi,

 

      you are right regarding amount of online tutorials and learning content for growfx, pls consider that Eduard and his team are smaller developer group compared to SpeedTree, which was acquired by Unity now with main focus on integration speedtree to Unity (game assets) workflows. I am not saying that tutorials are not good for learning, but maximum knowledge you will gain from your own experience and testing R&D workflows. Check CG artists like Marek Denko originated from my homecountry Slovakia, he started from zero knowledge and tutorials (there were no youtube and other learning resources), it was very hard for him, but look how mesmerising his personal artworks are now as senior artist known globally in our CG comunity.

 

      Eduard in the past has mentioned that he is aware of lack of tutorials, but future versions of 2.x growfx will allow to prepare something like universal starting presets for creating desired types of vegetation. In version 2 we already have drawing modes directly in viewport and other new cool features, so at the end we artists and developers are using wide range of available tools to achieve our goals,

cheers and wish you patientce while learning and evolving in growfx, do not give up, it will pay of in the future, Miroslav

[Gamundi0804]

1 hour ago, Miroslav Kovac said:

Hi Gamundi,

 

      you are right regarding amount of online tutorials and learning content for growfx, pls consider that Eduard and his team are smaller developer group compared to SpeedTree, which was acquired by Unity now with main focus on integration speedtree to Unity (game assets) workflows. I am not saying that tutorials are not good for learning, but maximum knowledge you will gain from your own experience and testing R&D workflows. Check CG artists like Marek Denko originated from my homecountry Slovakia, he started from zero knowledge and tutorials (there were no youtube and other learning resources), it was very hard for him, but look how mesmerising his personal artworks are now as senior artist known globally in our CG comunity.

 

      Eduard in the past has mentioned that he is aware of lack of tutorials, but future versions of 2.x growfx will allow to prepare something like universal starting presets for creating desired types of vegetation. In version 2 we already have drawing modes directly in viewport and other new cool features, so at the end we artists and developers are using wide range of available tools to achieve our goals,

cheers and wish you patientce while learning and evolving in growfx, do not give up, it will pay of in the future, Miroslav

 

I understand what you're saying.

 

Now I'll speak from my perspective as a new user.

 

I think it's due to the GrowFX community. In the 3D world, many focus on providing tutorials on how to achieve the perfect render, PBR materials, and assume that you buy vegetation from places like Maxtree, Globe Plants, or Evermotion. They assume that if you buy the GrowFX file, all you get are infinite variations, and that's it. Therefore, those same people who use it daily end up not sharing their GrowFX knowledge and concentrate on other software like V-Ray, Corona, etc., and you see so many videos that repeat the same thing. There are so many details to show in GrowFX, and the community itself is the one that's really neglecting it.

 

I wasn't referring to Exlevel itself creating tutorials for the software. I meant that the community itself is very secretive about its GrowFX knowledge.

 

But I'll continue learning from the manual and using creativity to solve the dilemmas. Thanks to the forum and to having people like you who support newcomers.