ForestPack 9.3: Animated ivy, tapered branches, and improved scattering

Forest Pack 9.3 is available now, and while there are many improvements to scattering, the biggest news is the continued improvement of ForestIvy. This release gives the branches of climbing plants a more convincing shape and, for the first time, the ability to use procedural wind animations.

The system is built around a few intuitive controls. A master switch enables or disables animation across the entire plant, while global Strength and Speed parameters defines the baseline intensity of motion. This alone is often enough for a believable sway, but when you need finer control, leaves and branches can each be tuned individually. The ability to reduce branch strength while keeping leaves more active, for example, produces the characteristic flutter of foliage in a light breeze where the stems might remain unaffected. 

Leaf animation only

Branch animation only

Branch and leaf animation

To help you to fine-tune the wind animation, a toggle in the Display rollout lets you preview the effect directly in the viewport. For day-to-day layout, this is disabled by default to keep performance responsive, but when you want to set up the motion, switching it on provides instant feedback without waiting for renders.

ForestIvy now also has improving branch modelling. Vines can now taper toward their tips rather than maintaining a hose-like uniformity. The settings can be found in the Branch rollout. Just set a Min and Max size, then set a distance over which the taper should take place. In addition, a new Branch Rotation parameters break up repetitive growth along vertical surfaces.

Tapered branches

Finally, baselines can now be extended interactively by painting, making it easier to adapt layouts to client feedback without redrawing everything from scratch.These improvements ensure that when ivy moves, it not only sways convincingly but also looks structurally correct for stills.

Extending Baselines

Forest Scatter improvements

While ForestIvy takes the spotlight, Forest Scatter also gets some handy updates. One of the most useful day-to-day is the option to interpret a distribution image as a gradated density map instead of a simple black-and-white mask. By using grayscale values, it is now possible to control density easily from the distribution map.

Creating paint areas is now more intuitive. Instead of switching tools, you can now hold the Ctrl key to paint and Alt to erase. Another addition is the ability to randomise scale by area. This makes it possible to give vegetation near edges, paths, or paint falloffs a different scale from plants in denser zones. It’s a quick way to mimic natural growth patterns or the effects of maintenance without having to create multiple ForestPack objects.

Under the hood, Forest Scatter has received several fixes that artists will appreciate during production. Corona Interactive Rendering no longer triggers unnecessary rebuilds, collision checks on large distributions are more stable, and the handling of include and exclude falloffs prevents interference, and preset libraries with empty geometry layers now load properly. 

ForestPack 9.3 is now available for all users with an active Maintenance Plan. To get the update, log in to your User Panel and head to the My Products section. If your plan has expired, you can renew it for another year at any time without penalty.

Update to Forest Pack 9.3 now!

New to ForestPack?

If you haven’t tried it yet, ForestPack Lite is completely free and can be used in commercial projects. Just visit the product page or click the button below to download the installer. When you’re ready to unlock the full toolset, you can upgrade to ForestPack Pro through our online store.

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