New Plugin – Bionatics releases natFX for Max

Jan 11, 2002 by CGP Staff

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Bionatics introduces natFX for Max, a unique plugin that enables you to rapidly generate procedural and botanically coherent 3D plants and trees with ease. Driven by AMAP, a technology developed by France’s largest agronomic research center, the CIRAD, natFX plants come richly textured and can be correctly aged and set in any of the four seasons. The plugin is geared towards the gaming and architectural industry. Read on for more information. The new natFX plugin offers the options that many have been seeking :

Realism, optimization, low polygon count, tight integration, great rendering, ease, rapidity and complete control. Don’t spend precious hours texturing, constructing and optimizing plants, those are hours you need to develop your project. A few clicks of the mouse and your 20 year old Cypress in summer is generated.

Optimize your scenes while maintaining a richly textured and highly realistic landscape. By giving you the option of either sending your natFX tree into MAX with its full geometry as a three-dimensional object or as an illusion of a three-dimensional tree is revolutionary. natFX allows you to turn all the branches or just a select few into billboards, saving you precious polygons while maintaining a 3D illusion. Like movie studio sets, only what is seen is built and saves production time and money.

If the back of the tree is never seen, there’s no point in generating its geometry. With natFX you get to determine which part of the tree has billboards and which part has geometry, plus you can modify each billboard and the geometry to your liking. Use the natFX Sector control to turn 180° of your tree into geometry and the other into billboards. For example, if you want 10 billboards for a tree, simply slide the natFX Billboard Count slider and then watch as your billboards are rapidly generated. A geometry combined with billboards maintains the tree’s three dimensional integrity, quality and best of all, minimum number of polygons.

Architects use it because the entire plant database is correct. Generate a 5 year old Maple and then regenerate it at 20. It’s the same tree and because the virtual seed actually contains an expression of the Maple’s genetic coding, all its aged components are faithfully reproduced. Each new Maple generated is therefore unique. Create a forest of unique Oak trees, set the age, season and level of details and do so with the maximum ease.

Visit Bionatics.com for more information.