GrowFX 2.0 released
Exlevel has released GrowFX 2.0, the latest version of the respected parametric tree and plant modelling plugin for 3DS Max.
Version 2 has been in beta for a while as it was a major rewrite of the plugin with a complete overhaul of its UI to a new, much more modern node-based editor. Version 1’s UI was perhaps its biggest weakness, making it difficult to visualise the connections and influences between different parameters, so for many users, this is a welcome improvement.
As well as the new UI and workflow, several new nodes have been added as follows:
- A Public Parameter node can be used to create an animated parameter, as well as to display the parameter on the main GrowFX panel.
- A Math node performs some math operations, can be used instead of the Affect node.
- A Random Generator node allows the user to generate random values for any parameters.
- A Switch node redirects the computing process between various branches of the node graph depending on the input value.
- An Attribute Position node and Attribute Distance node can be used to get some attributes, and then passing them to the Affect or Math node, for further influence on other parameters.
- A Value node allows you to set some value. It can be useful to connect this node to several parameters in order to control their values.
- Finally, the random generation algorithm has been completely redesigned. Therefore, plants may differ after conversion from the previous version.
Perpetual licensing is retained at a cost of $325. For users that purchased GrowFX 1.x, this release also marks the introduction of an annual maintenance plan for access to future updates. To find out more about GrowFX, visit the Exlevel website.
Damn after so long, this plugin was a classic. BTW 3ds max is getting slower and slower with every release! these days it takes seoconds to open modifier panel with a baci edit poly on it, it takes ages to do anything in the material editor, skin painting is entirely messed up with 50% decrease in performance form 2019 to 2021.
I don’t know what they are doing.
“3dsmax getting slower in every release”… okay.. Everybody knows what you are trying to do here, Guest. 😏 Good luck for you.
I am teasing blender homies and giving shit to Autodesk at the same time.
Whatever Guest (The original) is trying to do… he/she said true things. I am a Max user and not switching to Blender. Since I updated to max 2020 some operations are much slower… like opening the modifier panel as Guest said and like working with more than one opened max file at the same time.
As for GrowFX – awesome news. The only thing missing now are some tutorials to save some struggle/time
We are paying autodesk thousands a year for licenses and we are stuck with archaic tools from the 90’s (which miraculously still do the job but slooooowwly), we don’t have a single boolean operation that works properly, and their latest”retopology tool” is so slow I stopped using it I went back to Zbrush zremesher even if it produces mediocre results.
Meanwhile Blender is doing Booleans with addons like its butter and its got more poly tools than I can think of, it’s got a cloth sim tool that can create instant clothfx form mesh faces and inflate them and I’m still trying to figure out why my cut tool on poly doesn’t work, I can’t properly loop around faces, I can’t assign shortcuts as I want… You know the basic stuff.
I wish switching was easy,
Blender is living on donations and Autodesk is a multi billion company, don’t you love buraucracy and politics…
what does that have to do with GrowFX?
GrowFXand every other plugin posted by innovative or lone developers is a constant reminder how and why billion dollar corporations like Autodesk are not only incompetent but also monopolistic blood sucking industry tyrants, thats all. Nothing I can do about but nag on the internet from time to time, consider it my therapeutical session at the end of a hard days work.
As he told before, he is “teasing blender homies and giving shit to Autodesk at the same time.”… then is better you don’t waste your time with random trolls with childish behaviors.
come come now, can’t you take sarcasm, I’m no troll. Being all stiff in this industry is no way forward or fun.
Hey, switch to blender and then you will see real problems.
Have you tried the Boolean’s lately? Both ProBoolean and Boolean work very well with hard surface and organic modelling.
Also retopology modifier is slow, but so is zRemesher. The retopology modifier has many uses and if set up correctly it can work very fast. Combined with subdivide, proOptimize and project modifier you got an extremely powerful set of tools.
I’ve been trying pro-boolean and boolean for 20 years now. you hold your breath evrytime you click on them and save before you do. They don’t work much at all, if the geometry is slightly complex it destoys everything. I am taking all boolean operations to Zbrush these days, its not perfeect but at least i know it works most of the time, but I would love to know about Blender’s as well, the videos they show woking on hard surfaces I could only wish to do so in Max with that efficiency.
Retopolgy is too slow, and i’m still struggling getting good results as advertised. even after Subdivide and optimize I find it hanging forever to do anything.
blender is ridiculously slow. Both with subdivide and just editing heavier mesh. RIDICULOUSLY
ACKTSHUALLY, the guy has a point sadly. A lot of UI redraws (pretty much all of it) has become painfully slow since 2018-19, or whenever they decided to switch to the Qt interface thing. The strange thing is that it doesn’t appear to be the case on every PC…
I use to be a 3ds max and used it for 8yrs try blender super fast.
blender users are like expats who keep telling you how much better their life is now where they are but still homesick to where they are from
no… No … blender users are just like that annoying vegan friend who loves to go to the company’s barbecue party just to say that he is superior and different for being able to eat only lettuce.
Or that religious guy who knocks on your door at 6:30 am on Sunday to say he has a free salvation for all the problems in your life. ..
haha enough!!!
Blender users are mad because they can’t afford Max. They are like that guy who still drives a Ford Pinto and you got a brand new top-of-the-line Mercedes and he comes over every day to tell you why his Pinto is better.
Yes, with only one difference – “top-of-the-line Mercedes” is definitely not about Max. Houdini, maybe even C4D but definitely not Max. And BTW Blender is doing pretty good for being free software, it already can replace some of the paid alternatives Modo for example. I’m still using Max for modeling because Houdini modeling tools are very limited, but I’m pretty sure that I can replace Max with Blender I’m just too lazy to learn it:)
But I agree that many blender users very annoying.
C4D top of the line? I don’t think so. That software crawls to a snails pace when handling large polycounts or object numbers.
Houdini for sure would be top of the line technically, but (like you said) for simple things its to complex.
Max holds a nice in-between area between C4D and houdini. GrowFX is a good example of this. Pretty complex, but still user friendly and stable.
Blender is similar to Max in this way, but still lacks features (in certain areas) to compete with Max.
GrowFX is great but it’s a plugin produced by a third party company. In general Max is very limited without plugins – no scatter tools, no decent particle system, horrible visual programing tools (I have zero trust in Bifrost and they are failed with MCG), same with render passes – Scene States is an abomination.
No decent particle system? I mean, we can all agree that pflow has left to die in max. But even then… What other 3d app have something as modular/flexible for a particle system that can be remotely similar to Pflow? If you exclude Houdini, being obviously focusing at FX, not maya, not cinema, not blender, has an event based particle system out of the box. (we can say c4d has expresso+tP but…. this combo its even older and way more limited than pflow).
A program that can’t even model is….Mercedes??? Sure.
THIS, You made my day.
Back on topic, its very nice to see support for some more mature Max versions, and also a sensible hybrid perpetual/maintenance sub’ license model. I’ll be upgrading.. once I get some time to 🙂
On max 2021.3 here. Opening max modifier takes 1 second the first time you open a fresh max, its doing a population checking for any changes on modifiers. After that, its instant to open a modifier list. If it takes any longer than 0.1 seconds, you have something wrong.
OK do me a favor please, try this:
1 – Create three spheres and one biped in the scene.
2 – convert all spheres to edit poly.
3 – now go to motion panel and click on the biped. This takes exactly 2 seconds or 1.8 seconds I timed it) to open the motion panel controls for biped, try clicking anywhere else in the scene (deselect the biped) and click again on any part of the biped, the menu takes 1.8 to 2 seconds to open again every time.
4 – Now the spheres, go to modifier panel. and click click on any of the spheres in any order, the modifiers panel takes 1.5 seconds to open or update between each object.
This is Max 2021.3
Now go back to Max 2014 and try the same thing and let me know what you think of the difference. then try it on 3ds max 2009 if you got it.
Assuming that your problem will happen to anyone is not the solution. You should report your problem to try to get it fixed.
I can tell you that what you describe its not normal, I record this on max 2021.3, with 7 plugins installed, on a pretty crappy laptop, while recording, that makes everything 10% laggier. I get around 0.5 seconds opening biped motion. And the modifier panel, if any we are talking miliseconds. https://youtu.be/CmN-33V2N5I
Yes, the biped motion panel could open faster, I guess because is not ported to QT interface, but from 0.5s to 2 seconds, theres quite a difference.
Thanks for taking the time on that, wasn’t expecting it.
That is strange, I have 1 laptop 2 dual core xeons and one i7 most 64 gb rams and half of them with rtx cards. I have tested Max on all of them and I still suffer with menu slow downs, especially after a while working on a scene. it just comes to a crawl sometimes.
I have also heard the same problem happen with others. It got significantly worse after 2014.
* My modifier panel is always expanded to include 3 slides with most menus open, soft selection, edit geometry. It’s even slower to update that way.
The biped with motion panel takes maybe 1 seconds, the rest is instant. I’m working on a threadripper 1950 from 3(?) years ago, so not that advanced I would say.
The biped system is ancient btw, try to use CAT (its under Helpers), opening the motion panel with that is also instant .
Biped is one of the reasons I haven’t fully switched from max that and CAT. i’ve never seen any rig system out of the box from any software that has this capability and gets the job done for me like Biped and followed closely by CAT, it is sad as hell to see Autodesk abandon them.
This is true. Never again we will have such simple (20+ long tested and engaged) yet fast, robust, compatible, universal, easy-to-learn, engaging, convenient, powerful Auto Rig and Anim system.
I was just before an hour in a screen-share with someone who was working on Diablo2 with CharacterStudio (and BonesPro), showing me live, on screen, how he opens a model of some beast, from 1997 Max2. In Max 2021! And it is there. With all animations. The beast runs and attacks. And you can continue to animate from that point on further.
Yes, there are few bugs – but try rigging in Maya 2020: a Russian roulette.
Back in the day there were some truly groundbreaking coders and artists/developers working on max, they undestood what was needed and went ahead with creating it. I wonder if they have retired by now or are still working someplace, imagine how awesome it would be to have an interview with some fo these old max dev team and talk about tools such as: Biped, cloth and clothreyes, Brazil (plugin), Dreamscape (still a better looking ocean than anything out there short of full on liquid sim), HairFX
Remember how these were used in warcraft and diablo cinematics. The golden days.
Just gather them around in one room and have hours long discussion Joe rogan style. I’m surprised neither Cgsociety nor any other community site have done this yet.
Come on!
Go to a max meeting around siggraph, you will have some legendary devs there (still working in max). Zap anderson? Tom Hudson? and a bunch more. Podcast with them, you can found some of them around cggarage podcast has different interviews with some of them that are gold.
Eloi, no disrespect I don’t like meetings or sigraph empty showcases and promises, i’d like to see results more than words. I have no doubt Tom and Zap are senior devs but what good are senior devs in a political environment and lack of overall direction or whatever the reason is at Autodesk to not advance the tools as others which don’t have the same financial resources have, ex. Houdini and many many blender addons.
I’m still waiting on that cloth or muscles or rig or animation advancements….I have been waiting for more than 15 years now, i’m still using biped to cover 80% of my rigging needs and thats tech untouched since the 90’s! I am still using Cloth modifer running on a single core! taking an average shirt sim hours instead of minutes or seconds.
Is there a valid good reason for this, will it make any difference if I show up personally and beg them to have a look? for 20 years it hasn’t.
Edit: no disrespect to senior devs but after a certain age and established position the ambition and drive either slow down or die off.
omg man.. you are always dedicated to talk bad about max and max related things! Try to control yourself! If you try to participate on 3dsmax beta program forum you will understand that the developers are working hard each day more for improve our favorite 3d software! Until now you not realized that even this blog depends of max related products advertising and sponsored news? so, why you just try another software or even that free 3d tools? Is already enough! You are not helping to improve nothing, you are just making this place worst for all of us!
I think you are mistaking my complaints of Autodesk to this site or anyone (including myself) making a living off 3ds max. My complaints here and elsewhere and at Autodesk are directed at Autodesk development politics noithign more nothign less, because tis not the fault of the developers it is purely the fault of politics. I am not new to this industry I know exactly how they work inside and out.
omg man.. you are always dedicated to talk bad about max and max related things! Try to control yourself! If you try to participate on 3dsmax beta program forum you will understand that the developers are working hard each day more for improve our favorite 3d software! Until now you not realized that even this blog depends of max related products advertising and sponsored news? so, why you just try another software or even that free 3d tools? Is already enough! You are not helping to improve nothing, you are just making this place worst for all of us!
I was just replying to your question about “having the option to hear from long time 3dsmax devs”. They started doing multiple times a year online meetings to ask things directly to them, and even you dont like it, if you have the chance to go to siggraph, you can talk to them directly with a free beer in your hand. Dont know a better way than that.
I totally hear you in some areas of max has been neglected from a long time, I dont try to negate that at all! animation/FX areas in max need an overhaul, but saying that, max had a huge revamp in modeling tools, performance, materials that we can not forget neither.
I have been around the beta for a while, and I guess I can say that: I never saw so much activity, exciting things to come/being worked right now in 3ds Mas as right now. The 3dsmax roadmap is public and reflect all this things that are on beta or in r&d.
Hey Eloi!!! I am not talking about you.. I am one of your biggest fans.. always i follow your YouTube channel and liked a lot your dedication to max community. Sometimes I think that is time already for you make a blog also exclusive for max, because your positive views.
All good man, I have no quarrel with you, I understand what you are trying to say, I on the other hand have a fixed view on this, I have tried before doing what you said (except Sigraph) but there was no difference. Honestly I am not tryig to portray a purely negative argument every single time, I am saying that some things they need to step up and step out of in order to compete. And so far no amount of work or roadmap they put out there is convincing enough for many of us to see that max is heading on a serious direction. I am a max user and have been for more than 20 years, I don’t want this software to go down the drain, this is why I mention all this both at Autodesk and in here sometimes.
As for the roadmap it simply confirms my concerns, Max is an expensive software very very expensive, a small team of five or less and you are ending up with tens of thousands of dollars of pure Max licenses!
This merits complaints.
1 – They neglected Biped crowd system and are now working on “populate” a child’s play sorry excuse of a crowd, its purely done to please the archviz crowd by placing bunch of unintellignet uncontrollable agents in the scene walking like zombies and calling it a day.
2 – Not a single animation tool update (inertia modifier, directed animation and modifier blending are not updates but addons sadly, also this si not a realtime engine, give us the main tools and we can create our own inertia addons) Meanwhile I am still waiting for the pline Ik to have more than just one upnode (its been decades already). I mean imagine sitting at a table at Autodesk and the question comes up.
Ok guys what can we do to improve animation in Max? And the first thing that comes to their mind is to tell each other that they need to add the three tools mentioned above in the roadmap instead of that one fix about the spline IK which would’ve already pleased crowds! Just imagine the direction there and the lack of initiative or even worse I suspect lack of knowledge about the main problems facing riggers and animators in Max today. And this is a software we are paying top dollars for and they know damn well we can’t easily switch.
3 – Bifrost cloth…. God help us if they think we are going to do our future character cloth setups in a particle system! No way in hell. Once again Cloth gets neglected for this.
As for materials, please tell me that when you use composite material (which is used all the time in complex shaders that your machine doens’t come to an absolute crawl). They did mention something about improving material editor performance in the roadmap, lets hope they also improve this at least.
Anyway mayeb this conversation has gone long enougha nd I don’t like taking people’s time here.
Have a good day bro.
I totally understand your concerns on animation side.
Your concerns on point 3, I dont get it. Bifrost is not a particle system. Its a visual programing language, and with it you can create any type of tool. So if someone says that the new cloth solver in 3dsmax will be bifrost, doesnt mean that you will need to go exclusively to the “nodal interface” you see in maya. They can create tools that will pipe information to bifrost, but you will not need to get your “hands dirty” if you dont need it.
This is pretty exciting. I have been a GrowFX user for a while now. It is easily my favorite Max plugin.
Although, I’m a big fan of procedural workflows and nodal ui.
watching this tree modeling video was quite painful.
growFX may have other applications where it shines, but to me this does not look like the ideal tree modeling solution… both from a result and ux perspective.
Yeah, the video doesn’t do a very good job of showing it off. For some better examples of what can be done check out maxtree.org or have a look at the gallery on the website. It is an excellent L systems modeller. The old interface gave people problems, but once you are past the learning curve it is extremely powerful. There isn’t much you can’t model with it plant-wise. I have not had a chance to try out the node based UI, but coming from the command panel version I can see how the node based version would be superior.
Totally agree, looks like a real ball-ache to use & achieve good results. So many good 3D tree models of many varieties available out there.
Is this better than Speed Tree…? (without taking into account the price)…?