3D Plant Design programs

[Jonathan Allard]

Just wondering if anyone knows of a program that allows you to create a planting design and go from 2d to 3d easily.  I’m looking for a program with a large variety of realistic looking plants.  Any ideas?

[Noah Mabry]

Hi Jonathan! It really depends on what you’re trying to do exactly and how much you want to spend. For esentially free you can use SketchUp and import some plants. Or for lots of money you can use landFX plug in for AutoCad. Those are probably the two most user friendly options I can think of. It also depends, though, on what your base knowledge for these types of programs is.

[Jonathan Allard]

Noah thanks for your reply. I’ve been working with AutoCAD, Sketchup and Photoshop for close to five years now, and am pretty proficient at all. Lately our office has gotten into the 3d photorealistic graphics, but are having a hard time finding a program that meets our needs. We would like a program with a large library of photo realistic plants that can be easily edited. A program that allows easy transition from plan view to perspective would be great. If it’s a program that would run concurrent with AutoCAD, Sketchup that would work as well.

[Noah Mabry]

Well I guess that is sort of a different question. I am not a fan at all of 3D rendered trees/plants in photorealistic montages. They look way out of place and distract form the overall usefulness of the image to convey intent. They always look like big plastic trees set in the landscape.

I think there are a few resources online that you could use for trees and plants in these type applications that wouldn’t be too difficult too edit to fit into your image. I have a strategy of putting a popcicle tree (line with a circle on top) in my cad plan as a placeholder for approximate size and perspective.

All-Silhouettes.com has a variety of free vector trees, people, animals, etc you can use.

Vyronyx is an architecture firm that posts elements precut out that are great for the type of thing you are trying to do.

Hope this helps!

[Eric Gilbey]

Noah brings up a great point about mixed media in our 3D models. Having photorealistic textures on your proposed features is essential to make the photorealistic props look like they belong, and vice versa…you would not want to bring photorealistic props into a model you are purposely trying to look sketchy.

One program that imports and exports DWG files, and allows you to design interactively in 3D with the ability to still show typical 2D plans and cut sections is Vectorworks Landmark. Jonathan asked about many 3D image props that could be used and modified and Vectorworks’ Renderworks does already contain these, but you can easily make props from cutouts too. The best part of these objects are that they are represented in 2D and 3D…if the symbol is modified to be 12′ wide so would the 3D prop.

If you choose to do a sketch rendered model, you’ll need to use artistic or sketchy images for your plants to be consistent.

[Jonathan Allard]

Thanks for the info. I’ll have to start building a library of photo real plants. Do you know of a program that makes it easy to do your own cut outs? I’ve done some in photoshop, but it gets really tedious.

[Jonathan Allard]

I’ll have to look into Vectorworks Landmark. The ability to design in plan and see the product in 3D has many benefits. We are working with clients who see the plan on paper, but can’t relate to what it looks like in the real world. Working within one program also seems like it would be a huge time saver. Thanks for the response Eric.

[Eric Gilbey]

It is tedious work, and of course we can make it easier by staging our photo image with a neutral background board or sheet…and may even take planning a day to photograph when the sun light is less dramatic to capture a more generally lit plant. There are so many variables about capturing your own cutouts that it could end up being a discussion of its own. I have used photoshop to cut them out as well, and would love to hear from others on the tools they use for making cutouts.

[Tim Zhang]

You can crop plants from images, convert to PNG, and then import into sketchup. After you render them they look very photorealistic since they are.. realistic photographs. Most importantly, they are very low polygon.

Example here:

http://www.timzhang.net/portfolio/ar2.jpg

There are also companies selling 3d blocks. However, you will need a super computer to handle the amount of polygons. I couldn’t have more that a few trees in the model since a tree branch would have just as many polygons than the entire model.

Example here:

http://www.timzhang.net/portfolio/zenhouse.jpg

[Tim Zhang]

For cropping, always find images with a clear background like a sky. When you crop them in Photoshop, use “Select” and the “Color Range”, then eyedrop the color in the background. Play around with the fuzziness for level of selection. You should also duplicate the image layer and play around with the level to increase contrast, that way you can select the contrasting area and then transfer the area selection into the original image. Afterward, clean it up with lasso tool and eraser tool. Each plant probably takes 15-20 minutes to do.

[Wyatt Thompson, PLA]

There are lots of rendering programs that will do this. The learning curve and cost varies greatly between them.

Twilight Render, SU Podium, and Kerkythea all work from within SketchUp and can produce quite good results. They all use the same render engine so you’ll likely get similar results with each. The quality of the final image will depend largely on the quality of materials used in the model.

3DS Max (an Autodesk product), Maxwell, Vue, Thea Render, Indigo, and V-Ray are all arguably more powerful, stand-alone programs that will interface with Sketchup and perhaps CAD, although I’m not positive about that for all of them.

It really depends a lot on what you’re willing to spend (time and money), the context of your projects, and the look you are after. All of these programs have forums that offer advice and materials.

Regarding cut-outs, Photoshop CS5 has greatly improved the selection tools that help with cutting elements out of photos.

[Boilerplater]

See my discussion on VizTerra from a few months ago. It was developed specifically for landscape design and and is VERY easy to learn.

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