ITOOSOFT releases ForestPack 9 with a new climbing plants plugin

ITOOSOFT has announced the release of ForestPack 9, the latest version of its environment creation toolkit for 3ds Max. This update introduces many new features and improvement, official support for 3ds Max 2025, as well as the new ForestIvy plugin, a brand new tool available exclusively in ForestPack Pro to create procedural climbing plants.

ForestIvy is ITOOSOFT’s new procedural plant modeling tool specialized in the creation of realistic climbing plants in 3ds Max. Key features include:

• 30 high-quality presets: Users can create climbing plants quickly using the included presets. All the textures are based on photo scans for improved realism.
• Customizable Library Browser: Users can load presets from the library browser or add and manage their own assets.
• New Multithreaded Algorithm: ForestIvy uses a brand new algorithm to provide instant feedback with practically no wait times for growth simulations.
• Hybrid Drawing & Algorithmic Growth: Artists can customize the balance between manual control and algorithmic automation,  allowing them to draw directly on the model or dial up the growth parameter to let the plugin take over. 
• Advanced Leaf Controls: Plants can have multiple layers of leaves, flowers, berries, and more. Each has its own parameters, including growth patterns, heliotropism, and leaf size adjustments based on branch age.
• Customizable growth rules: Users can create or edit plants using easy to understand parameters such as growth duration, adhesion, gravity, leaf size variation, heliotropism, and multi-layered plants with flowers, berries, and more.
• Surface-Independent Growth: Although designed mainly for climbing plants, ForestIvy can also be used to create bushes and shrubs without a surface.
• Efficient rendering and viewport display: With full instancing support for Arnold and V-Ray (CPU), users can easily render large scenes with thousands of high-poly leaves. 

Many more improvements are also included in the core scattering plugin as follows

• Distribution Maps: ForestPack 9 introduces the ability to use multiple mapping channels for the Distribution Map. Now, users can use any map channel to control distribution maps without affecting the coordinates used for texturing the surface itself. 
• Randomize Stacked and Separate Sub-Splines: The Randomize Stacked feature has been moved to the Areas rollout and now supports stacked splines as well as surfaces. When combined with the new Separate Sub-splines option, each sub-spline is treated as a separate area, allowing for more realistic randomization and natural distributions across stacked scenes like building interiors and balconies.
• Convert Geometry List to ForestSet Objects: A new option in Forest Pack 9 enables users to quickly move items from the Geometry List to ForestSet objects. This greatly simplifies the addition of ForestSet into user’s workflows, making it easier to manage and organize your scatter objects and set up clusters using items imported from the library. 
• New Rollout Order for a Streamlined UI: The rollouts in ForestPack 9 have been reorganized to create a more logical and user-friendly interface. The most frequently used settings are now grouped together at the top, reducing the need to scroll up and down through the user interface. Also included is a redesigned toolbar with clearer, more recognizable icons
• Point-Cloud Mode Optimization: A new point-cloud mode in Forest Pack 9 fixes the point density for all scattered objects, regardless of their size, and updates the GPU only when a Forest object is modified. This optimization dramatically improves viewport performance, particularly for complex scenes with dense scatter distributions.
• Updated Library Browser: The Library Browser has been improved, with better performance when loading and resizing thumbnails, as well as an added icon for easier navigation. 
• Edge Mode for V-Ray Proxies: Forest Pack 9 improves support for V-Ray proxies with support for using edge trimming mode.
• Improved Memory Management: Rendering large scenes with animated objects is now more efficient as Forest Pack 9 limits the animated sample storage to 10GB and dynamically loads and unloads data as required. 
• Improved Camera Clipping: Improvements to the behavior of Display Max Items during camera clipping ensure better stability and performance. 

For more details on the release, including a full list of features and improvements, visit the ForestPack 9 announcement page or the release notes.