The Grove 7 opens up a world of possibilities
Wybren van Keulen writes:
Take all existing features – wrap them up in an all-new implementation – and open up a world of possibilities! Get instant feedback from a flexible new interface that amplifies the fun of growing. Go back to you tree at any time – prune, rebuild, keep growing or even add wind animation whenever you want. Added improvements to wind, branching and vertex colors make this a release to be reckoned with. Best of all it is now available in 7 languages!
This is a beta pre-release and it strictly works in Blender 2.8! Blender 2.8 is just about to enter beta and is not considered stable for production use! But hey, I’m so excited about this new release and Blender 2.8, and there’s just no fun in waiting!
Incredible!! :)
These appear massively detailed. How big of a file size is a packed “typical” tree? How much RAM is required/recommended?
Very detailed indeed. Trees are complex structures, but most of their detail is in the last years of growth. That’s where twigs take over. They have the leaves, flowers and fruit – and these twigs are instanced all over each branch end and alongside branches. This saves an incredible amount of memory, both on disk and for instance when rendering on a GPU. This is also one of the biggest advantages over massively large tree libraries. A single highly detailed twig can be used across several trees in your scene.
It’s very hard to describe a tree as typical, as it varies widely between species, ages and how much growth the twig encompasses. A decent tree 30 Mb, an older tree would be above 60 Mb when saved on disk in a blend file, including the twig. As they get younger, the size gets exponentially smaller, and as they get very very old, it will of course explode in size. Trees are exponential in nature, nothing you can do about that.
I have noticed that now that The Grove has separate operators, every step gets cached in the undo buffer. This can quickly add up and fill your RAM. So if your machine is low on RAM, I’d set a limit on the Global Undo Memory. For any 3D work, I’d say 8 Gb is a good minimum. But when you have less, you tend to work with the limits you have.
Thank you for your comprehensive answer to an (almost) deliberately vague question.
It does successfully answer the question as to what kind of computer system would be deemed “capable” for “typical” use of the product, which has prevented me personally from purchasing it in the past. Thanks to the advent of Cyber Monday, however, I’m in a better position to join the ranks of your users.
This addon is awesome but … 10EUR for one twig with another 109EUR for the addon!? I think its a way too much at least for enthusiasts like me doing Blender only as a hobby with NO income of it. Mean yep, for a graphics studio and maybe freelancer its a couple of bucks but for a hobbyist…
Hmm…This project looks awesome. But because i’m just a hobbyist it’s to expensive form. Additionally i read that a need twigs to purchase separately to use the grove immediately which makes it more expensive.
Maybe if the have some sale actions i will reavlaute and purchase. But not now………….