Forest Pack Pro Review
Matt Guetta wrote a short review, and made this wonderful image above, for Max Underground about iToo Software’s 3dsmax scatter plugin – Forest Pack Pro. It is no secret I use this plugin myself and actively promote it too, it just got better and better with each upgrade and is now a very complete scattering tool for 3dsmax that can do more than the chosen name for it suggests.
Read the review at Max Underground – Forest Pack Pro Review
Do you us Forest Pack yourself? if so, please tell us about your experience with it and what you love about it the most. Or even what is that one thing missing that could make it even better…
Well done Matt. Cracking work as always my friend.
Personnaly I use Multiscatter which is very good too. I tried Forest Pack but RAM management wasn’t very efficient when scattering VRay proxies whereas Multiscatter managed it better so that’s why I bought Multiscatter. But: it was about 36 months ago and, since then, I suppose Forest Pack has become very good with RAM management because I see many artists using it (and few using Multiscatter). Maybe the only missing feature with Multiscatter is the “clustering” function of Forest Pack which seems very cool but there’s a turnaround for it: you just have to create some basic black & white maps with Photoshop to cluster your proxies with Multiscatter.
@ArLAcH By the way, with forest you dont need to convert your models into vray proxies, you can scatter them right away. There is no difference using proxies or normal models considering the ram usage. Not sure how it was 2 1/2 years ago but the ram usage is pretty good right now. There is a trial version if you want so you can test it if you want.
Nice review 🙂 I use multiscatter too and very happy with it. But it seems very smart that you dont need to convert to proxies. That library function looks cool as well. Perhaps I should try the demo 🙂
I just downloaded the lite version for some testing and it looks very promising. Off course you can always use advanced painter and scatter grass and / or trees. But this plug in seems to give you a lot of freedom and tweaks to get it the way you want it.
nice, but it seems to me that there is not much more information than what we can get directly on ITOO website..
Forest from Itoosoft just rocks. One of our favourite plugins ever, not to forget extremely friendly developers there. Definitely worth spending the money.
Great review and images! I’d like to buy forest pack pro, but to be honest, the high price is prohibitive compared to other similar plugins. Forest pack is 257USD (PER YEAR!), Multiscatter 269USD (one time), and Carbon Scatter to 195USD (one time). Is Forest Pack really that much better than Multiscatter and Carbon Scatter? I’d love to see a comparison of all three plugins. Also, I’d be very interested to see a review of Carbon Scatter – ecosystems are fantastic to work with natively in Vue, but I wonder how they do in Max, etc…?
First, sorry for delay and thanks to all 🙂
@cads3d : Thanks Paul
@ArLAcH : @olli3d is right. The good thing is that you can use models during your research and then just convert them in proxies. You won’t need to reload them in FPP
ø@JørgenLangevad Forgot to mention it on the review but the library can be installed in a network path 😉
@mattijsdebruin : Yep! There is a lot of features to make your scene natural. I love the “cluster” feature and the TreeEditor is really easy to use.
@xoio : Agreed!
@PeteRobie : Thanks but the price is for one time, you’ll have (if you want beta & updates after 1 year) to pay for a subscription (70$), not again for the plugin!
PeterRobie: No, you don’t pay 257 USD every year. This is the price of a single license, including one year of free upgrades. The subscription plan is optional (70 USD by year), and you can renew it at any time, receiving all the accumulated upgrades before to the renewing date, and one year thereafter. We usually release two major upgrades every year.
In the past (the plugin is on the market for more than 11 years), we have released regular upgrades for a price of 150 USD approximately every two years. Now we have moved to a yearly subcription scheme, it let us to release the new features as soon they are developed, and allow to our clients to have predictable costs and guarantees a continuous product support.
Usually with other plugins usually the upgrading policy is not well defined. Sometimes the software is updated frequently, and others much less. But you don’t know if you’ll have to pay the next months for a new version, or if it will be free. We prefer to provide to our customers certain security about this.
@PeteRobie No, you don’t pay 257 USD every year. This is the price of a single license, including one year of free upgrades. The subscription plan is optional (70 USD by year), and you can renew it at any time, receiving all the accumulated upgrades before to the renewing date, and one year thereafter.
We usually release two major upgrades every year. In the past (the plugin is on the market for more than 11 years), we have released regular upgrades for a price of 150 USD approximately every two years. Now we have moved to a yearly subcription scheme, it let us to release the new features as soon they are developed, and allow to our clients to have predictable costs and guarantees a continuous product support.
Usually with other plugins usually the upgrading policy is not well defined. Sometimes the software is updated frequently, and others much less. But you don’t know if you’ll have to pay the next months for a new version, or if it will be free. We prefer to provide to our customers certain security about this.
@itoosoft and @mattguetta : thank you for clearing things up. the subscription plan sounds extremely reasonable and as far as cost is concerned, tips the scales in Forest Pack’s favor. Perhaps there is a way to make the subscription policy more clear on the website, so if there are others like me, they will not be deterred from purchase due to any misunderstanding.
keep up the great work!
@PeteRobie : thank for your suggestion. There is a purchasing FAQ in the store page (http://www.itoosoft.com/store/faq.php), but it is clear that we should to highlight it with an icon or something.
@PeteRobie thank for your suggestion. There is a purchasing FAQ in the store page ( http://www.itoosoft.com/store/faq.php ), but it is clear that we should to highlight it with an icon or something.