Review of greenworks' XfrogPlants - USA Southwest, v2

Greenworks has put together a collection of plants of the USA Southwest created from photographs and/or scanned bark, petals, and leaves. These plants are very accurate and look realistic. With version 2, greenworks has completely rebuilt some plants while its artists have reworked others. In addition, they have replaced many leaf, flower, and bark textures with higher quality ones. Thus, their plants look more vivid and alive. They have done this in all their version 2 libraries. A full product list that includes individual products such as USA Southwest and Bundles such as Asia Bundle can be seen starting at: http://www.xfrog.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv? [Click on XfrogPlants to see the individual libraries.]

There are 21 libraries of plants with 20 species in each library, but there can be 3-6 variations on each species so the total number of models is a minimum of 60. Along with the models are 20 species of Alpha Billboard Renders with variations, again, ranging from 3 to 6. There are also the same number of Alpha Perspective Renders as well. The same billboards and perspectives are on each of the two DVDs that comprise the set so it is very easy to combine them along with whatever model format you are using. When you order the set of 2 DVDs for $149.00, you get many 3D file formats. The 3D formats are: 3ds, c4d, Iwo, max, mb, xfr, mtl, obj, obp, and vob. There are also the necessary textures in tif format which are on both DVDs. The Plant libraries can be purchased on CDs instead of DVDs. See the USA Southwest library on the greeworks online shop. In this review, I am reviewing the DVD set of the USA Southwest. These can also be purchased from resellers such as Renderosity.

Below are a combination of models and billboards executed and rendered in Vue 5 Infinite.

You can download a PDF of each collection in your choice of language. [Again, click on XfrogPlants and then the PDF of the individual library.] You cannot download a PDF of all the libraries as a unit because those links don't work. These PDFs show the different plants as well as the different "poses" of the plants. You can also click on each plant and get an enlarged picture of the plant as well as information about it. The documentation on the web site is incredible for it shows the plants from many different perspectives.

Even though I listed the formats contained in the DVD previously, notice the size generated by the different formats.

If you have a choice of which format to use, let size play a part in your choice. A native XFR file contains almost the same number of polygons as these other files.

I exported a number of files into different formats as well as used some of the files on the DVDs. These I imported into Vue 5 Infinite.What was interesting is that the SW06_1.xfr file contained 187,614 polygons while the other files that I imported into Vue contained about 184,804 when read in Vue. If you are working in Vue, there is a VOB file format available on the set of DVDs.

As I stated earlier, one can order the CDs or DVDs from greenworks [click on shop online and then on XfrogPlants] or resellers such as Renderosity. One can order plants from one location such as USA Southwest or one can order a bundle of different plants from a major location such as the USA bundle for $599.00 for 6 libraries.

What can I say about this collection? It is beautiful and works very well. I would love to have all of them.The desert image above uses models and billboard; however, I used only three billboards and they are of the very small plants. The largest plants are in VOB model format.

In order to demonstrate that the pictures in the various library PDFs on greenworks site are accurate, I opened a number of the 3D files in Right Hemispheres's program called Exploration and did screen captures of them. You can see them below. The rendering in Exploration is very quick and basically crude for it is just to show the basics of how a file looks for reference purposes.

The Staghorn Cholla below and the Miller's Pin Cushion below were opened in Exploration while the two variations in the beginning of the review were screen captures from greenworks' PDFs.

These plants are truly magnificent! For those who missed my other reviews, they can be found on the Renderosity site. See the review of Xfrog3.5 and the review of XfrogTUNE. Those reviews show more options for using the plants and creating your own.