E-on Software announced the releasing and the immediately availability of Plant Factory, their revolutionary new technology for creating and rendering high-quality 3D plants. Plant Factory was designed and offers solutions custom-tailored to fulfil the needs of the CG, SFX, Architecture and Gaming industry. The technology available in Plant Factory represents the culmination of e-on software's decades of expertise in the field of digital nature and delivers unsurpassed realism and performance. Using Plant Factory users can create any kind of vegetation, from simple grass to super elaborate hero trees by painting it, assembling simple building blocks, or completely graphing all plant properties. Generating procedural geometry and materials of unlimited detail and animating all plant aspects using precise wind and breeze algorithms. One of the key features of The Plant Factory is its ability to dynamically set global plant characteristics such as plant age, health, and seasonality. These characteristics can drive any node or set of nodes in the TPF graph to add more complete plant definition and realism.
With Plant Factory users can:
- Export 3D vegetation to any 3D application as standard .OBJ, .3DS or animated .FBX
- Render stills and animations for compositing jobs or for use as billboards
- Expand their plant library through a dedicated 3D plant model store
As a next generation vegetation platform, Plant Factory incorporates four foundational elements:
- Multi-Platform/Multi-Discipline – operates across all CG platforms including real-time, streaming, and offline rendering systems and caters to the needs of CG, SFX, Landscaping, GeoDesign, Architecture and Gaming communities
- Botanical Coherency – allows the creation of more botanically accurate plant appearances and behaviors
- Precise Control – users can create plants of any desired shape, appearance, and behavior using simple building blocks
- Massive Populations – building on e-on’s leadership in EcoSystems™ to create landscapes containing millions of plants
Plants created using the Plant Factory technology can be exported to any 3D Application using multiple export formats such as FBX, 3DS, OBJ, etc. All plants are exported fully rigged, fully textured, with UV maps and displacement, etc. Breeze or wind animated plants can be exported using a fully rigged mesh, or as a cloud of animated vertices (MDD style). That way the user can fine tune the plant animation to your needs, directly inside your preferred application. Plant Factory is a 32 & 64 bits application, designed for the Windows® 32/64 bits XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, as well as Intel Mac OS X 10.5+ platforms. For better performance, a good video board with a minimum of 1GB of video RAM is recommended. A 64 bit system is highly recommended.
The Plant Factory product line comprises 3 main products:
Plant Factory Producer ($1,495): for Production and SFX Facilities.
Author fully custom intricate 3D plant models in concert with your production workflow. Hand-draw your plants, assemble pre-made components or build plants from scratch using the node graph. With expanded collaboration and composition capabilities, advanced artistic control, and unbelievable productivity, Plant Factory Producer is the perfect vegetation solution for special effects and production studios.
Plant Factory Studio ($995): for CG Professionals and Small Studios.
Designed for CG professionals and small studios, this feature-rich version of Plant Factory creates richly detailed custom plants. Hand-draw your plants, assemble pre-made components or build plants from scratch using the node graph. Produce high-quality 3D plants with unprecedented ease-of-use and export them to any other 3D application - including Vue EcoSystems.
Plant Factory Designer ($495): Static Plants for CG Professionals.
Designed for CG Professionals, Plant Factory Designer lets you hand-draw your plants, assemble pre-made components or build plants from scratch. Produce high-quality 3D plants with unprecedented ease-of-use and add them directly to your Vue Scenes and Vue EcoSystems or export them as static 3D meshes for use in other applications.
More information at: E-on Software