TUTORIAL: Getting Started with Forest Pack, Part 1 (beginner)

Forest Pack is incredibly easy to use, this series of tutorials is designed to get you up and running quickly and give you the skills you need to create fantastic scenes with Forest Pack Pro.
Part 1. Trees and Bushes: Introduction to key Forest Pack features and using splines to control the placement of objects.

Read a written version of this tutorial and download scene files from the iToo Software website: http://bit.ly/2SwwcPR

Free lite versions of our plugins are available that never expire, can be used commercially and include nearly all of the powerful features found in the Pro version! Find out more by following the links below

Forest Pack: http://bit.ly/2UZF11m
RailClone: http://bit.ly/2S43Wij #forestpack #3dsmax #itoosoft

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Closed Caption:

This series of tutorials
designed to get you up and running quickly,
to give you the skills you need
to create fantastic scenes with Forest Pack Pro.
Throughout we're going to create a
number of Forest Objects, each designed to
demonstrate a different aspect of the
plugin. For ease we've split the tutorial
into 3 parts in the first we're
going to create all the trees and the
bushes you can see in the scene. This
will introduce you to key Forest Pack
features and you will use splines to
control the placement of objects. In the
second part we'll create the grass and
flowers, introducing distribution on mesh
surfaces and how to setup Include and
Exclude areas. In the third part we'll
look at randomizing Color easily by adding
a simple color variation using the Optimize Materials
tool and Forest Color's Tint by
Gradient feature. Before you start make
sure you've downloaded the starter files
from the iToosoft website you'll find
versions for V-Ray and Mental Ray. Open
the appropriate starter file in 3ds Max
and we'll get going. In the first
tutorial we're going to look at a typical workflow for
Forest Pack, We'll start by selecting Distribution areas to control where
items are created in the scene. We'll
then choose the geometry to scatter,
control the density, and finally add
randomized transforms to create some
variety.
If you have a quick look at the
scene you can see it's fairly simple. In
addition to a building and a boat, a
couple of ground planes and some canal
edgings, there are some splines that we
can use to generate forest objects. These
are very easy to create but for simplicity
they've been included in the scene file.
On the left hand side, in the rectangle,
are all the objects we can use to create
the foliage in this scene. Over here
we've got two types of bush. If you
get in a bit closer you can see there
are a few types of flowers, three types of
grass, a leaf, and a couple of proxy
objects: an oak tree on the right and the
willow is on the left. To get started,
we'll create the trees to the left of
the canal. To do so go up to the Create
Panel. From the drop-down list. choose iToo Software
and then click on Forest Pacl. You'll see that Forest Pack has two creation
modes: Generate which is on by default,
and Custom Edit. In Custom Edit mode you
add individual trees by clicking in the
scene - but we'll leave it on its default
Generate, which requires you to
click on a spline or
a surface as a distribution area. With
this selected we'll come over here and
pick on the spline called "spline trees 1" and you'll see that the area fills with
single planes. To modify this come over
to the Modify panel and you'll see the
geometry rollout is automatically
selected but if it's not, then you just
need to find geometry and click on it.
In here you can see it's already
created, and it always does when you
first click on a new spline, a default
geometry object. If you scroll down you
can see the types of objects you can
use. You can click on Library to open
one of the built-in objects, you can
click on Template which is already on
and from here you have some simple
geometries (it's set to one plane at the
moment) alternatively you can come
down to custom object and you can pick
something from the scene. That's what
we're going to do. So click on custom
object and you see the planes disappear
as we're changing it. If we come over
here to the left we're going to pick the
willow tree so click on None and then
it's expecting you to click on the
geometry to scatter. Click on the
willow tree proxy. A warning will come up
because we're using very high density
mesh. In order to optimize the
viewports and keep everything running
smoothly it's asking us to enable a few
things. One of the things it will do is
it will look at the current camera and
it will limit the visibility to the
camera's frustum. It's
also going to display these trees as a
points-cloud instead of the actual
geometry and it's going to turn off
animation until render time. It's a good
idea to enable all of those, then you'll see
a point cloud indicating the trees you've
just added.
So if we come back over to the geometry
area we can see willow is now added to
this geometry list. We can Unlimited items of geometry in the pro version.
In the light version you can have up to three objects.
To add a bit more variety, we'll add an extra
object. The tools for adding and
controlling the geometry list are all
just tucked away underneath so you can
add new items, you can delete an item, you
can add multiple items by clicking on
that and picking them from scene, or you can use the add multiple picker, plus you can copy and you
can paste items too if you want to
duplicate them. We'll just click to add a
new item. The green cross says "Add New
Item" and it will go back to its default
template of a single plane. So to change
this to the oak tree exactly as before
come down to Custom Object click on None and then come over here and click on the
oak proxy and you should see your point
cloud updates. Now and you have two types
of tree in there.
That's the first scatter done but we
also want to scatter these same trees in
a number of different areas and in these
splines here and the ones up nearer
the camera. So in addition to a geometry
list there's also a list that controls
the areas that you can use in
the scene. In the pro version again
you have an unlimited number of areas
that you can use and in the lite
version you can use up to four. So we
have an areas list here and you can see
from the list Splinetrees1 is listed
since this is the one we've already
selected. We can add other spline areas
to this list by clicking on the Add New
Spline Area button. Here it's also
possible to add objects, other forests,
and paint areas, so if we click here it adds a
new Spline area under here. Spline is
already lit up and it's waiting for us
to click on a spline in the scene. If
I click on this spline here called Groundleft
it'll automatically fill those areas
with more trees. Let's add the third one
which is the one up near the camera.
Again click to add a new spline area
and click on the groundleftspline object. Now we have trees near the camera and if I
switch the camera view
you should see it starting to look
something like the finished render. There
are a couple of things to be aware of
when using splines. They're interactive
so if we move a spline around, the trees
will move to reflect it, so you see as I
move the splines the trees are moving to
represent the splines new position. Also
unless you've got a surface selected
the highest Z point of the splines we
are using will govern the position of the
trees so if I move this up even though
I'm only moving one of the splines up
they will all go up, so that they are the
highest point. Finally, splines can
either be Include or Exclude areas so
these at the moment are all Include
areas - they're generating trees - but if I
click back on this object and click and
pick Splinetrees 2 - and make it an
Exclude area you see the trees disappear.
Moreover, if I select the spline and push
it over into the Forest you can see it's
actually starting to take away from the
trees that are there. So this is a very
powerful feature. We'll leave this for now as an include area and then we need to add
a little bit of variety. All these trees
have the same rotation and scale at the
moment and by randomizing the scale
slightly, and the rotation, we can create a
lot of variation in these trees without
having to use a whole load of models.
Let's make sure the trees are selected
and this time we're going to look
for the rollout called Transform. This rollout is responsible for
randomizing the position, rotation
and the scale of geometry.
In each case it picks it from a random
range determined by a Minimum and a
Maximum value. We're just going to
randomize Rotation and Scale for now so
the first step is to enable them.
You can see it reflected in the
viewports. Enable scale as well and
again you can see a randomized shuffle
through these scales starting to happen.
With the rotation the Z-Axis was
already rotating 0 to 359 degrees so
any of these trees could be rotated
at any point in that range on the Z axis
giving it a full 360 degrees of rotation.
We also want to rotate them a little bit
on the X and Y axis just so they can tilt over to
the sides ever so slightly. Set the X Min to -5 and Maximum
to 5. set the Y Minimum to -5 and the Maximum to 5 and leave
the Z as it is.
If we come down to scale you can see that with scale you can lock
the aspect ratio so X Y Z are all affected
equally. In this case I only need to
change these values here and it scales
proportionately on the X Y and the Z
axes. I could also control the X and Y separately
or have no aspect ratio control too. Here,
I'm controlling each axis independently.
I will leave the default on:X Y Z and actually we'll leave the range
set at its defaults. A minimum of 80 to
120 gives a nice believable range and this
completes the trees on the left hand
side. In the next step we'll use an
open spline as opposed to the closed
ones we've been using so far to scatter
trees on the right hand side, just behind
the fence. Since we've just set up
this forest with randomization
controls and we don't want to create it
again from scratch you can select
the Forest you just created and duplicate it
by hitting CTRL + V, or going up to Edit
and Clone. Make sure it's not set to Instance
and this time we'll call it Forest_Trees_Right and
click OK.
We now have two Forest's in the scene
that are identical. What we want to do is
delete the areas we've already created for this and
assign two new ones. In the Modify
panel, with the Forest Object selected,
go to the Areas rollout and delete all the areas that are
already there. The trees will disappear.
Next we'll add back another Spline
Area. Like before click on the plus button, it's waiting us to pick a spline and this
time we want this spline here which is
called Spline_trees.
Now when you're using an open spline
like this, the distance either side of this
spline that the trees are scattered is
governed by this Thickness value here
which by default on mine is set to 0.254 meters. You can see as I increase this
the trees will spread out from the sides
of that spline. If we set it to about 2.2
meters that seems to be about right. Now,
I know from having rendered this before
that if I go to my camera view the willow
trees hang a little bit low. Let's
do a quick preview render to check this.
Yeah, you can see the willows here
come down across the path and kind of
obscure the background a little bit, so I
think for the trees on the right-hand
side of the path we'll actually turn the
willow off and just use Oaks over here.
Click on the Forest and go to the
Geometry rollout again, and find the
willow model. Hit the red cross button to
delete that item. Now we can see only the oaks. That's all the trees in the
scene finished, in the next step we'll
add the bushes to the scene using many
of the same techniques, but we'll also
incorporate the library so that we can
load in some of the included models and use them as our starting
point. In addition to selecting objects
from the scene, objects can be selected
from forests built-in library. So we'll
get started again by creating a whole
new Forest
from scratch. So I'm just going to come out
of perspective view and go to the Create
panel >iToo Software > Forest Pro and
I'm going to pick Generate and select
the same starting spline: splinetrees1.
You can see in there now the planes
are there. If we go to Modify, down to the
Geometry rollout, there's our Default object. Now, last time
we picked an object from the scene by
going to Custom Object and picking from the scene.
This time we're going to select the Library
button up here. When I click on that
it brings up the library. On the left
hand side you've got your directory tree
and you've got a whole load of 2D trees
that we can use over here, classic and
standard, and then we've got some
built in 3D objects too, and you can see
there's some trees, some bushes, some
palms, a fir, and maple, and all sorts.
If I want to use this bush, for example,
all I have to do is select it and double
click. I'm now using the bush in the
scene. See the point cloud just down here -
there's our bush. It's that easy. We can
augment that with a couple of other
objects from the scene. This
time we'll add multiple custom objects.
So, instead of clicking on the plus and
picking them the way we did last time
let's use a new trick. We'll click
on Add Multiple Custom Objects and then
from here we'll look for the bushes. "Bush
Large" and "Bush Medium" and hit Add.
That's automatically added them both and
assigned them as custom objects. That's
a quicker way of doing it!
So while we were able to leave the
distribution as it was for the trees the
bushes are smaller and as you can see they're a bit too spread out. We
want to change the density so the bushes
are much closer together. In order to
control that, we go to a new rollout
called Distribution. Now, in this
rollout we can see how the trees are
being distributed and that's happening
using a bitmap. Basically what's
happening here is that any area which is
white is a potential tree, and the black
pixels are empty. This bitmap is
being laid down across the whole scene using this size, and then tiled in every
direction.
By changing to a different bitmap we
get different distribution patterns, so
for example, we're using Spread1 at the
moment, and these are the built-in
presets, we could try dense and
immediately we have a few more bushes
because the black and white dots here
are denser. We can make it denser still
by changing the size of this bitmap in
the scene and we can do this by going
down to the Density settings here and
reducing the value. You can see as I change
this downwards. if I make this value
smaller, it gets more dense. If I make it
larger they spread out. We want these
really to be quite dense, so let's set
this to about 32 meters and we get some
serious undergrowth.
Let's add some Transform Randomization
too, just like we did with the trees.
Go to Transform, enable Rotation and
this time we'll set this to,
the same as before actually, let's go -5, 5, -5, 5 and leave the Z as it is.
We'll enable Scale leaving the
aspect ratio locked and change Min to 80
to define a starting point, and let's make them a little bit larger,
to 140% so we've got a slightly larger range there.
Those are bushes done, but we just want to
add in a couple more areas. So
they will run under the trees near the
camera too. To do this let's go back to Areas
click on Add New Spline Area and
add them using the same spline. And also
we'd just like to obscure the base of this
building a little bit so we'll also add
this extra spline here, so if I click to
Add a new spline area and click on this
spline here which is spline_bushes_1. Just click on that and we can
see we now have the bushes coming out
and lapping around the building a little.
Next, we'll add some underneath the
trees on the right-hand side too. Just
like before, duplicate the bushes Forest object.
Rename the clone
"Forest Bushes Right"
In the Areas list, delete all the existing Areas then add a new spline area and
pick the same spline that we used for the trees on the right.
Set the thickness to 2.2m to spread
them out a bit. We now have some bushes
growing under those trees. The final
step will be to add some smaller bushes in
front of this fence just using the
library bush, since that's the smaller of
the three, and add a little bit of
variation. We'll use this spline here which
is another open spline to create them. So,
we'll start again from a new
Forest object I click on Forest Pro,
and we need to pick this spline down here.
So there we have an area called spline small hedge,
if we come down here and set the
thickness to 0.25 that's probably about
right. In fact, 0.25 is fine so we don't want it
spreading too far. In the Geometry
rollout we'll change the default item to
the Bush. Nothing much is appearing at
the moment but we'll change that with
Density. Come into your Distribution
rollout, change the image being used to
dense and set the size to about 24 meters. Now you see
we've got more bushes. Finally, let's
go to the Transform settings, enable the
Scale here. We don't want
them getting too large this time, they
should be smaller so they don't obscure the fence. Let's take the Maximum down to 100
and the minimum let's make it smaller to about 40%. We've sort of shrunk the
size of them. Enable Rotation and use the
usual -5 and 5 so they aren't
all upright, and leave the Z Axis as it is.
That concludes this part
That's the bushes and the trees done.
In the next section we're going to look
at using Surfaces instead of Splines to
distribute objects, and we're going to
create the grass and the flowers in the
scene.