Sebastian Appel Posted April 2, 2014 Report Share Posted April 2, 2014 Hi there, I'm a proud new member of the Growfx-owners club and after having used it for only one evening i'm totally comfortable and amazed by what it can accomplish. I'ts the perfect solution for veg-animation. I have noticed a thing that could possibly be fixed in a future release (given that it isn't a problem at my end): - I've noticed that the interface sometimes gets messed up. I dont know if this is a max-issue or a GPU-issue since I have to close down max before being able to get the menues working again. (I'll provide pictures if it helps pinpointing the issue). When this happens the max-window flickers, the menues opens and close random and all the names gets switched with each other. Anyways I have some questions to the Growfx community and the Forest Pack Pro too if possible (it seems you have a very good communication between each other) First I have a question about the wind-simulation in Growfx. Is it possible to loop the wind? When i loop the wind strength (auto key from 0 to 2 and back to 0) I get this twitch at the end because (i think) the winds pattern is different at the start than in the end? Also which is the smartest way to implement an animated tree into a Forest Pack Pro system? I've made som tests using VrayProxies with animation, but they are extremly heavy. Is there a different approach? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mindflux Posted April 2, 2014 Report Share Posted April 2, 2014 Hi Sebastian, love your work on the blog. It would probably help Eduard if you could mention your Max version + system specifications. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian Appel Posted April 2, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 2, 2014 Thanks mindflux :-) I'm using 3ds max 2014 My specs are: i7-4930K Hexacore GTX 770 OC 16GB Ram Win 8.1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eduard Posted April 2, 2014 Report Share Posted April 2, 2014 Hi Sebastian, Thanks for using our product! Yes, if possible, please send us screenshots of this problem. I can also send you a minor update (1.9.7), there is basically fixed many bugs, and soon we'll release it... Regarding loop the wind, we already have an idea how to implement it, and we'll try to do it soon, but in any case it will be after the release of version 2.0... As I have repeatedly said, it's better to add the wind modifiers into After Mesh Modifiers group. In this case, the calculation of the wind will be very fast! About Forest Pack Pro + GrowFX, hope to hear tips from other users who are constantly using it Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ptrain03 Posted April 3, 2014 Report Share Posted April 3, 2014 hmm, I am not very familiar with this, but an animated proxy would have to load a new model per frame so when you write out the proxy it seems like that might be heavy as you say ( I have only done it once with mr proxies). When I use non proxied geometry the file is brought into the max file as an xref so the polycount is high within the file but you don't have to pull in a whole new model for each frame from the HD. You might try to create a mesh, then use point cache modifier (make sure wind is an after mesh modifier so the point counts don't change) you would still have the full poly plant in your file, but the animation would be precalculated. I am not sure if this is better than an animated proxy though. This is a good question and I wish I had a better answer. I don't really do animation that much. You might try googleing procedures for animated trees in forest pro. Grow FX just gives you a mesh. The same procedure could be used for any mesh. I apologize if this wasn't much help. I saw your post earlier but I was hoping somone more experienced in animation could give you a better answer..Great work on your portfolio by the way. Welcome to GrowFX ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian Appel Posted April 3, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 3, 2014 Thanks for the answers! I got to play around with it a bit more yesterday. I succesfully managed to loop the wind! Since the problem was the Perturb speed and Vector I simply animated them just like the wind speed. Also I did some tests with Forest Pack. It seems that it can handle the Growfx-object itself. This means that Forest Pack handles the proxy-making on the fly. It even handles the animation too from the wind modifier (I haven't yet tried putting the wind in the "after mesh"-modifiers). here is a small test i did of the wind loop. Sadly youtube wont allow loop playback, so you have to trust me on this one :-D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
austingrd Posted April 5, 2014 Report Share Posted April 5, 2014 Nice work Sebastian! I think that's the closest to being a natural to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian Appel Posted April 9, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 9, 2014 Thanks austingrd! I ran into a problem! Apparently Growfx and Forest Pack dont go that well together when animation is involved as i thought. When adding 2 or 3 different Growfx trees it starts to calculate the direction of the tree everytime you update the Forest Pack object even though I have freezed and turned on manual update. Last night, it got to the point were Max crashed. I then tried making a Vray Proxy, but I ended up with a filesize og 11gb before I shut down max. BUT! I am thinking that if it were possible to bake the animation down to transform/rotation keys inside max, all my problems would be solved? This is the approach Alex' did in his 3rdSeventh film (manually using keys to animate noise into the rotation) from start to finish ) with a few more tricks I believe. I have found this script so far, but I have yet to test it, but I will update as soon as I get home from work http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/bake EDIT: Apparently 3ds max already has this feature when exporting fbx files: http://arlab.com/doc/arlab/product/3d_engine/exporters/3ds_max/4.advanced/baking_animations Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3DMK Posted April 13, 2014 Report Share Posted April 13, 2014 Thanks austingrd! I ran into a problem! Apparently Growfx and Forest Pack dont go that well together when animation is involved as i thought. When adding 2 or 3 different Growfx trees it starts to calculate the direction of the tree everytime you update the Forest Pack object even though I have freezed and turned on manual update. Last night, it got to the point were Max crashed. You may have issues with the version of Forest Pro you are using as it should work fine. Have a look at this video demo of using GrowFX & forest Pro with animation. I have also tested it and it works fine I am using Forest Pro 4.1.3 & GrowFX 1.9.6 Hope this helps Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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