Creating/Importing plants

[shushens]

Hello everybody!

I don't know if this is the right section, but compared to the other sections, this one looks more relevant. I am modeling a backyard. For that, I have to make some small houseplants. There seems to be no easy way to make it in XSI. I tried Simarton T-Gen, but it is too complicated and it would take a long time before I could make anything presentable. The xfrog plugin does not work either, because when I try to load it from plugin manager, XSI says the "library does not exist". I tried importing some free plants from XFrog standalone as OBJ, but only the polymesh is getting imported, not the texture.

Please tell me how to create/import plants into the scene. XSI seems to be the only major old 3D package that has no proper vegetation generation plugin.

[shushens]

Wow! No one bothered saying a word!

[Zafar Iqbal]

I feel with you.

[Soth]

Hi,
Check http://www.xfrog.com/ you can download free plugin and plants example pack from theirs website (http://www.xfrogdownloads.com/xfrogsoft/XfrogImporterXSI.zip) that is the lastest one, it should work, if not contact xfrog directly.
I used it a lot with Lightwave (even that Lightwave have couple tree generation plugins), it is good, very realistic. Anyway I want to try this plugin soon with XSI, I will let you know what results I got.
Good luck!
Tomek

[shushens]

In my scene, I have used some Xfrog plants finally. And there are some things I found out.

Xfrogimporter plugin normally does not work with XSI 6.5, which I am using. XSI always keeps saying "library not found", though it is the library we paste in the plugins folder. There are additional library supports needed for geometry recognition and handling, which neither come with Xfrogimporter, nor with XSI. I mailed them, of course, and how predictable, they did not say a word.

Now, I am not really a disassembler or anything, but when I installed Okino Poly Trans and Okino plugin for XSI, the plugin was a disaster, but suddenly my Xfrogimporter plugin, which I forgot was still pasted there, started to work! So see if it is because of something Okino installed, I uninstalled original Okino software, and it was still there. Then I uninstalled Okino plugin for XSI and removed its folder, and XSI again started saying "Library not found".

So, I installed that stuff back in and ran some experiments with it. A lot of complicated Xfrog houseplants could never be imported. Usually every Xfrog plant comes with 3 models. Sometimes those are 3 ages or 3 polygon densities. I tried them all. For example, HouseIvy (No.9 in houseplants pack) made XSI crash always, regardless it is 4, 5, or 6. The ironic thing is, all the best plants will make XSI crash as you try to import them. I do not really know why, maybe because of exceedingly complex geometry, which is not very likely.

So, I used 3D Object Converter 4, exported 3DS file of desired Xfrog plant and brought it into 3D Object Converter, and exported it as OBJ, kept the textures that came with the plant in the same directory as OBJ, and imported it all from within XSI, and this time, XSI could import the plant with ease and also the texture was associated with it. I just had to replugin the leaves to the transparency channels and turn on "use alpha" and "invert" and everything worked perfectly.

Bottom line is, there is no use discussing Xfrogimporter plugin, because even if XSI does recognize it, that won't come to good use in most of the cases.

[Soth]

Looks like I will stick with Lightwave for Importing XFrog plants... anyway, thank you for sharing your experiences. Hopefuly XSi Point Owen/Lightwave Importer wont have any problems with objects as heavy as 200,000 polys. :)
Cheers
Tomek

[shushens]

Good decision, Soth! And you're always welcome :)
Lightwave is very good software. I could never learn it though. But I use Modo once in a while.

[shokan]

Any chance of seeing a tutorial for beginners about using 3D Object Converter to do this?
Thanks.

[shushens]

There is nothing much to write a tutorial about man. It is like this:

1. Open the plant in XFrog, and export as 3DS.
2. Open 3D Object Converter and drag and drop that 3DS onto it.
3. Save as Wavefront (.obj).
4. Make a folder where only the XFrog tiff textures and that OBJ with MTL is and copy it to your XSI project folder for convenience.
5. Open XSI and import OBJ from that folder.
6. You will soon realize, the transparency maps are not working. So, select the leaves where transparency is screwed up, press 7 to open RenderTree, open the phong material and uncheck the unnecessary fields, plug-in the diffuse texture to the transparency node as well, then under the transparency properties of phong material, check both "use alpha" and "invert".
7. You may have to repeat this many times because XFrog does not use just one but many sets of plants in case of big trees.

That's all... render and have fun :)

[shokan]

Thanks for the help!

[shushens]

Anytime buddy! You are welcome!