The software company Laubwerk has announced a new update to its Plants Kits. This collection of ready-to-render, realistic 3D trees, which is specially designed for visualisers and architects, is available for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D. And now also for Python.
All plant models from Plants Kit 1 to 4 and the free Plants Kit freebie have been updated with the new material descriptions and new textures.
The highlights of the 1.0.9 update:
– Fundamental update to the material system including support for translucency, V-Ray 2-sided material, highlights and more.
– The foliage browser now offers an additional setting for the material quality. The lowest produces simple materials that render quickly. The highest level can use advanced features of the renderer such as V-Ray 2-sided materials.
– Under Python (Windows) it is now possible to load foliage plants. Customers can create customised conversion scripts or write their own importers for applications that are compatible with Python 2.7 or 3.3, for example Lightwave, Vue, Houdini, Blender, etc., programs that Laubwerk does not (yet) directly support.
– Compatibility with 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design 2015.
– More caching is used to improve the loading times of Laubwerk-Plants.
The full list of improvements and fixes can be found here.
Over the past few weeks, the Laubwerk team has updated all 1,512 model variants of Laubwerk Plants with the new material descriptions.
The update is free of charge for existing customers. Customers can download the new installers of their Plants kits by logging into their secure area of their Laubwerk account on the website. Windows users should uninstall older versions of the Laubwerk Player plug-in before updating.
The Laubwerk system allows visualisers and architects to quickly and easily insert photorealistic tree models into their 3D scenes without the usual delays caused by over-complicated parameters or excessive memory usage.
Each tree model comes in 3 shapes, 3 ages and the 4 seasons per shape, with adjustable heights and detail settings.
All Laubwerk Plants Kits are available for €149 (net) each from the Laubwerk Store and selected resellers . The free Plants Kit Freebie is also available for download in the Laubwerk Store.
By the way: In the next issue, Digital Production will be focussing on plug-ins! Issue 6/14 will be published on 29 August.
