Free Vegetation Software - PlantFactory

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

https://www.bentley.com/software/e-on-software-free-downloads/

Credit for the FYI:
TrainSimJack


Looking to create high quality textures for all your vegetation needs - you need to look no further than PlantFactory. It used to be payware but now it's free - it appears to have been an industry standard.

While it uses Geometry Nodes which can be a bit overwhelming for the uninitiated - there are vast libraries of content included. These libraries include all kinds of easily tunable parameters so that no two trees are identical (the beauty of Geometry Nodes). There are a bunch of tutorials online.

Basic Categories

• Random Seed Parameter (mathematical not biological)
• Age
• Health
• Season
• Size

The seasons seem to realistically color the trees for Autumn and Winter has nice trees without leaves. We can get away from the overly saturated autumn colors and white winter leaves we see so often. It can produce 3D trees as well - but I haven't figured out if there is a way to keep the poly count under control. You need to download all the extra libraries to get the full content which offers a wide variety of vegetation from around the world.

The potential here is vast and the variation endless.

At first - I thought I would have to export the models to Blender to make my textures - but no - it has an advanced render engine built in and will export your foliage isolated from the backdrop with a respective alpha channel file.

A couple hours of playing around to become familiar:






Regards,
Scott

[qballbandit]

Oh man... I really need to retire so I can have more hours for this kind of stuff. Thanks Scott!

[scottb613]

Oh man... I really need to retire so I can have more hours for this kind of stuff. Thanks Scott!

Hi Neil,

Happy to help. Yeah - I've made my own vegetation for all the routes I normally run - for years - tired of searching for applicable textures with enough resolution - now I can just make my own. I use 1024's across the board and you can set any resolution in PF - this will be SOOO much better. They use HD PBR textures in PF - the results I've been generating are absolutely outstanding. Takes some memory - my old 16GB machine complains occasionally and I need to restart - this will work better on my primary machine with 32GB of RAM.

Best of luck.

Regards,
Scott

[rrdiesel87]

This is very interesting! I need to look in to this as well.

[Erick_Cantu]

Hmmmm, this is useful. I had several ideas for making low-resource trees that are a little more advanced than cruciform trees, but the textures were a barrier. I took a bunch of photos, but never really got around to building up the gumption to editing them and building alpha channels. This eliminates that barrier.

The main thing I had in mind was to ensure that a large number of trees are placed in a single map. Texture vertex counts are certainly important, but a much more important consideration is drawcall counts. OR will batch all static scenery objects that use the same texture into a single drawcall, so placing each tree model's textures into an individual image instead of placing them all into a single image is a huge waste of resources. This should free up resources for higher-poly trees. The single biggest thing that could be done to make trees better would be to make the bottom portion of the trunk 3D at the lowest LOD - even a simple 4-sided structure that is placed just outside of the boundaries of the alpha texture, mapped to the trunk portion of that texture, should do.

More advanced trees could use some simple planes placed perpendicular to the main canopy. This is how the default trees are rendered in TS20xx (although these planes are rendered as sprites that always face the camera). If you look at the default US2 trees and shrubs, many of them are actually built this way to a degree.

[scottb613]

This is very interesting! I need to look in to this as well.

Hmmmm, this is useful. I had several ideas for making low-resource trees that are a little more advanced than cruciform trees, but the textures were a barrier. I took a bunch of photos, but never really got around to building up the gumption to editing them and building alpha channels. This eliminates that barrier.

The main thing I had in mind was to ensure that a large number of trees are placed in a single map. Texture vertex counts are certainly important, but a much more important consideration is drawcall counts. OR will batch all static scenery objects that use the same texture into a single drawcall, so placing each tree model's textures into an individual image instead of placing them all into a single image is a huge waste of resources. This should free up resources for higher-poly trees. The single biggest thing that could be done to make trees better would be to make the bottom portion of the trunk 3D at the lowest LOD - even a simple 4-sided structure that is placed just outside of the boundaries of the alpha texture, mapped to the trunk portion of that texture, should do.

More advanced trees could use some simple planes placed perpendicular to the main canopy. This is how the default trees are rendered in TS20xx (although these planes are rendered as sprites that always face the camera). If you look at the default US2 trees and shrubs, many of them are actually built this way to a degree.

Hi Folks,

Yeah - this is going to work very well for me.

I'll have to load up DTG TS again and take a closer look at the trees - they certainly look far better than anything we have in ORTS.


Regards,
Scott

[docmartin]

I followed the link and tried to download. However, no matter which option I chose I always got the error message "This site cannot be reached."

[scottb613]

I followed the link and tried to download. However, no matter which option I chose I always got the error message "This site cannot be reached."

Hi...

I think it may be something on your end - I just clicked the link and got this:
PF.jpg

Pop Up Blocker? When you click "Download" it has a Pop Up that confirms you agree with the EULA.

Regards,
Scott

[docmartin]

Thanks, Scott. But, yes, I got as far as the Pop Up but once I had agreed with the EULA and then selected a download I got the error message.
Cheers, Martin

[scottb613]

Thanks, Scott. But, yes, I got as far as the Pop Up but once I had agreed with the EULA and then selected a download I got the error message.
Cheers, Martin

Hi Martin,

Sorry for your troubles - I just tested it - my download started immediately.

Other than your Antivirus or Security Software preventing the download - I can't think of anything else off the top of my head.

The total download for all the files is probably in excess of 20GB - so you need bandwidth as well.

Maybe someone else will have some better ideas.
😉

Regards,
Scott

[pwillard]

Was going to mention this software about a year ago... but I was convinced it would make trees that were too complex.

[scottb613]

Was going to mention this software about a year ago... but I was convinced it would make trees that were too complex.

Hi Pete,

Yeah - that still might be true - but the 2D renders are awesome.
😉

Regards,
Scott

[CSXT Q-317]

Says download links are coming soon on my end.

[scottb613]

Says download links are coming soon on my end.

Hi Folks,

Yep - I see that issue now as well.

I don't have an answer - as others have stated - it's been out and free for a while - this isn't something new. There are many videos stating same. Glad I took the time to download them while I could. Perhaps this is a temporary issue?

Regards,
Scott

[scottb613]

Says download links are coming soon on my end.

Hi Folks,

FYI: The download links appear to be back again.

Regards,
Scott