May 20, 2014. Beaverton, Oregon: e-on software, makers of the leading solutions for Digital Nature, announces the immediate availability of Plant Factory 2014.5, its revolutionary new technology for creating and rendering high-quality 3D plants.
The company also announced the introduction of the FREE Plant Factory Exporter. Thanks to Exporter, artists are able to export Plant Factory content directly to their favorite 3D application. The Exporter includes all the latest import/export advances of release 2014.5.
Check out the Free Plant Factory Exporter
Plant Factory 2014.5
Available for free for all Plant Factory users, this major update adds improved export capabilities, major illumination rendering optimisation and export to LumenRT.
New or enhanced capabilities include:
Export improvement: Plant Factory can now import natively in LightWave's .LWO and Cinema4D's .C4D file formats. Major improvements were added to .FBX exports, and specific import scripts for 3ds Max and Maya are now shipping with the product. When exporting to Cornucopia3D (the online store for TPF plants), TPF automatically validates exports to C3D's standards. Plant Factory can now export Plant variations as presets, to save resources and dramaticaly lower file size. Finally, Plant Factory 2014.5 can now natively export to LumenRT*.
Illumination rendering optimisation: Major optimisations were made for the rendering of indirect lighting, especially for vegetation using billboards.
Content collections: Plant Collections are now automatically synchronized with the Cornucopia3D TPF Nursery, allowing direct access to hundreds of TPF plant species, directly from within the software interface.
More information about the Plant Factory technology is available online at: www.plantfactory-tech.com
* Requires the upcoming LumenRT 2014.
Free Plant Factory Exporter - Tweak Plants and Export as Standard 3D Meshes
Designed for CG artists using any 3D application (such as 3DS Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, Softimage, LightWave, Modo, etc), this very simple version of Plant Factory lets the users purchase exactly the plant species they need, generate variations, adjust age, health and season, and export as static 3D meshes*.
The Free Plant Factory Exporter supersede the former paid-for Plant Factory Converter (discontinued).
More information and download instructions is available online at: www.plantfactory-tech.com/exporter.php
* Mesh resolution cannot be adjusted; it is typically in the 250-500K polygon range.
Product Specifications
Plant Factory 2014.5 is available as a free update for all current Plant Factory users, independantly from their maintenance status.
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 Personal Learning Edition (PLE) and Trial versions will be updated to release 2014.5 in the coming weeks.
About Plant Factory
Plant Factory is designed for the CG, SFX, Architecture and Gaming communities. It offers solutions custom-tailored for all audiences. 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.
With Plant Factory users can:
- Create any kind of vegetation, from simple grass to super elaborate hero trees
- Create vegetation by painting it, assembling simple building blocks, or completely graphing all plant properties
- Generate procedural geometry and materials of unlimited detail
- Animate all plant aspects using precise wind and breeze algorithms
- Export 3D vegetation to any 3D application as standard .OBJ, .3DS, .C4D, .LWO or animated .FBX
- Render stills and animations for compositing jobs or for use as billboards
- Expand their plant library through the Cornucopia3D TPF Nursery
