Distribute Hanging Plants in 3ds Max Using Forest Pack

This method combines the flexibility of ForestPack with the unique features of ForestIvy to help you add large numbers of plants to your scenes without overwhelming your computer or workflow. It’s an ideal solution for scenes with many balconies, where manually placing each plant would be impractical. Let's dive in and see how this technique works.

Step-by-step tutorial

Step 1: Create a Guide Geometry for ForestIvy

To begin, we'll need to create a temporary piece of geometry that will guide the growth of the hanging plants in ForestIvy. We will use this geometry to define the space where the plants will grow while hanging. The goal is to make drawing on the balconies easier by utilizing AutoGrid.

Start by switching the display mode of the geometry to “Mesh” for easier manipulation. Then, activate AutoGrid and draw a polygon that roughly matches the maximum spread of a hanging plant you want to fill the balcony. It’s important to align the back edge of this geometry with the balcony spline to ensure proper orientation later.

After drawing the basic shape, adjust the geometry using 3ds Max’s modeling tools to fit the general shape of the balcony's edge. This will prevent unwanted plant growth towards the building or along the railings. Finally, align the pivot point of this temporary geometry to match the edge of the spline. This ensures that when we distribute plants later using ForestPack, they will be properly aligned with the balcony’s edge.

Step 2: Growing Your First Hanging Plant with ForestIvy

With the guide geometry in place, we can now use ForestIvy to grow the first hanging plant. Start by creating a new ForestIvy object and open the library browser to load a preset plant. In this case, we’ll use the Bougainvillea preset.

Next, add the temporary polygons we just created as the surface for ForestIvy to grow on. Draw a growth spline along the back edge of the geometry. Increase the growth value to see the plant begin to grow immediately.

Depending on the desired growth pattern, you may need to adjust some settings. For instance, you may need to modify the climbing value to a negative number to make the plant grow downwards rather than vertically. You can also adjust gravity and other parameters for a more realistic look.

Step 3: Generating Variations for More Realism

To avoid repetition in the plant distribution, it’s essential to generate variations of the plant. ForestIvy provides an easy way to do this by adjusting the "Random Seed" option. By animating this value, you can create different variations of the same plant without having to change any other settings.

To bake out the variations, use the snapshot tool, setting the range of frames to match your keyframes and specifying the number of plants you want to generate. Ensure you set the ForestIvy display mode to “Mesh” before running the snapshot process. Note that the snapshot tool will not work if the display mode is set to “Quick Mesh.”

Once the variations are generated, adjust the pivots for the plants. Enable "Effect Pivot Only" and center the pivots to the individual objects. Use the Align tool to match the Y and Z positions of the surface you originally used to grow the Ivy. This ensures that when ForestPack distributes the plants along the balcony edges, they will align properly.

Step 4: Using ForestPack to Distribute the Plants

Now that we have a few hanging plant variations, it’s time to distribute them along the balcony edges using ForestPack. Create a new ForestPack object and select your five plant variations. You can also enable the “Populate from Scene Selection” option to automatically add the plants to the geometry list.

In the ForestPack settings, change the mode to "Path" and add the balcony spline. Adjust the spacing between the plants until there are no gaps between them. To prevent plants from appearing where the balcony meets the wall, we’ll use a Forest Effect.

Go to the "Forest Effect" rollout, click to add a new effect, and load the “Path Distribution Limit to Spline Material ID” effect. Change the value to 1 to exclude the material ID for the back edge where the plants should not appear.

Step 5: Adding Realism with Randomization and Gaps

To make the final result more natural, we can introduce randomization to the plants' distribution. You can adjust the scale and rotation randomization in the transform rollout of ForestPack. However, avoid excessive translation randomization, as it could misalign the plants with the edges of the balconies.

To avoid a solid wall of plants, you can create gaps in the distribution. This can be done by adding a new object to the geometry list and setting its type to "Disabled." Each time this object is selected, a gap will be created. Adjust the probability setting for the null object to control how often these gaps appear.

As a bonus tip, you can simplify managing the probability by consolidating the plant variations into a single ForestSet. This makes probability adjustments easier by reducing the number of entries in the geometry list.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we combined the power of ForestIvy and ForestPack to efficiently distribute hanging plants along the edges of balconies. This method is procedural and flexible, allowing for quick updates throughout the design process. With this technique, you’re ready to tackle even the most complex balcony visualizations, creating realistic, beautiful scenes with ease.

Watch the full tutorial on how to add hanging plants to your 3ds Max scenes in the video below.

Video tutorial by ItooSoft