free plants for TFP

[Doug.S]

If you don't remember or new enough to not know....

TFP imports Google Sketchup models easily.

Go here to find a selection of plants/shrubs....and browse around for many more items both architectural and other stuff

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=6aa02c2960a4bd998ca584c34b15d203&prevstart=0

[Allan Chesney]

Thanks Doug for reminding us about this.  I must admit I prefer 3D tress to the photoboards.  Photoboards can look very real in some situations but shadows can be a real problem depending where the sun is.  I tried to do an overhead view of a garden showing where the shadows from the vegitiation would be - Useless!!  I had to go back to previous 3DS trees. With these Google ones it adds to the variety.

Found another problem with the overhead view too.  It appears that the "sun" is located just outisde the terrain, so the shadows 'fan out' from that direction instead of all coming from infinity. I had to do a bit of image manipulation to make it look right!!

Thanks again

Allan

[Doug.S]

If you need even more variety or something very specific, you can "grow your own" 3D plants.

xFrog is a costly but very good plant maker (trees, bushes, just about anything)

But there is an easy to use and free program called Plant Studio....by fern-hout or some name like that....do Google search for plantstudio

[Allan Chesney]

Doug,

That looks interesting too.  Apparently it only does plants (flowers) not trees but could still be very useful. I have not trieed it out yet.

Allan

[Doug.S]

3 other 3D programs make trees easily too...

Carrara
Vue Espirit
Bryce