ForestPack Requirements
Supported versions of 3ds Max
Our plugins support 3ds Max 2019 to 2024.
Due to Autodesk's licensing policy, Forest Pack is only able to officially support 3ds Max 2019 to 2024. The installer also includes versions of Forest Pack for 3ds Max 2013 to 2018 which should install and work as expected, but we are unable to test them.
Supported Platforms
Microsoft Windows:
- Windows 10 64-bit
- Windows 11 64-bit
Supported Renderers
Forest Pack supports native instancing in the renderers and versions listed below
- Arnold 7.2 and greater. Please make sure the MaxToA plugin is up-to-date. You can download the most recent version from the Arnold Renderer website .
- V-Ray and V-Ray RT 2, 3, 4, 5, Next and 6 supported, For V-ray 4, please ensure you are using V-Ray 4.3.
- Corona Renderer 1 and onwards
- Octane 1.x and onwards
- Redshift 2.x and onwards
- FStorm
- Final Render
The 2D Billboard library is only supported by Scanline, Mental Ray and V-Ray.
Not all libraries have materials available for all the renderers. To see which renderers have partial library support, please check the compatibility matrix shown below. To see which renderers are supported by each library item, please see the online library browser .
To use Forest Color and Forest Edge maps with Arnold, you will need to turn on Legacy 3ds Max Map support in Render Settings->System.
Feature Compatibility
Due to technical limitations, feature support varies between renderers. The table below illustrates the compatibility of Forest Pack's key features with each render engine.
= Fully compatible features.
= Unsupported features.
= Similar effects may be possible using the renderers own shaders.
| Standard | V-Ray | V-Ray GPU | Arnold | Corona | Octane | Maxwell | Final Render | Redshift | FStorm | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Native instancing | ||||||||||
| Create instances using Forest Tools | ||||||||||
| Forest Colour | ||||||||||
| Forest Material | ||||||||||
| Edge mode | ||||||||||
| Material Optimiser | ||||||||||
| Points-cloud display | ||||||||||
| Parametric areas | ||||||||||
| Distribute using maps | ||||||||||
| Automatic clustering | ||||||||||
| Frustum culling and falloff | ||||||||||
| Randomise and control transforms | ||||||||||
| Manual edit mode | ||||||||||
| Scatter animated geometry | ||||||||||
| Randomise and control animated geometry | ||||||||||
| Forest Effects | ||||||||||
| Library Browser | ||||||||||
| Presets with compatible materials | ||||||||||
| 2D Billboards Library |
Forest Colour is partially supported by V-Ray GPU. Get colour from map using Random Values or As Texture on Surface is not currently supported.
The 2D Billboard library is only supported by Scanline, Mental Ray and V-Ray.
For renderers not mentioned in the above list it is still possible to use Forest Pack using Forest Tools to convert scattered objects to standard Max instances.
License Manager
For network licenses, you will need to install the license manager on a networked PC. The license manager has the following OS requirements:
Microsoft Windows:
- Windows 10 (32-bit and 64-bit)
- Windows 8/8.1 (32-bit and 64-bit)
- Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit)
Microsoft Windows Server:
- Windows Server 2019 (64-bit)
- Windows Server 2016 (64-bit)
- Windows Server 2012 R2 (64-bit)