Custom plant generation for use in DAZ Studio?

sriesch

For those of you who wish to create your own custom plants for use in DAZ Studio, what methods have you found to work well, or what false paths should be avoided?
Xfrog Lite ( http://xfrog.com/product/XA-07.html ) leaps to mind; I don't own it and haven't tried the trial version yet, and don't know how well things import into DAZ Studio, or even if there are any significant Xfrog-DS conversion issues or hidden gotcha!'s. (I own a bunch of Xfrog plants and know how to import those, but I've never tried creating any myself.) Any experiences with this?
I own Bryce. I haven't yet found a way get trees transferred acceptably from Bryce to DAZ Studio (using either the bridge or via export/import). Has anybody explored using Bryce as a starting point, and found a good way to complete the transfer, perhaps with this use of other tools in between the Bryce export and DS import?
I own Hexagon, but my modeling attempts have met with mixed success, and I don't relish the thought of trying to create trees this way yet. There are of course a variety of other general modeling applications out there not specifically geared towards plants, but brief research suggests none may be the best approach for me for the same or other reasons.
I own Cararra 5, but haven't been able to export a tree in a useful way so far.

Szark

There is a new plant making program due out sometime this year http://www.theplantfactory-tech.com/

Carrara trees can be exported as I have done so recently but there is a little box in the Plant Modelling Room that needs checking in order for the leaves to be exported. Once this is checked on the standard default export settings should will ok.

Full Mesh Detail is what needs checking see image attached.

What I have to watch as I only have 2Gb of Ram is the poly count. I also have decomator so I can import a poly heavy tree and then reduce the poly count in Daz Studio without loosing too much detail.

jaebea

I have downloaded and imported into DS some of the free plants and trees at Xfrog and Turbosquid. They come in fine as obj's and scaled between 1000-10,000. Only one problem with Xfrog is that the transmaps are backwards.....the white part is supposed to be black, etc. Easy enough to fix in Photoshop. And even better, I can swap out leaves in my own massive library.

WendyLuvsCatz

you can export a carrara tree with morphs and skinning along the timeline and use it as a morph target for itself to create rustle too.

Kerya

Free
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/PlantStudio/index.htm

sriesch

@Szark, thanks, I was missing the "Full-detail mesh" parameter. I figured there was a way to export the leaves I hadn't found yet, but didn't realize that same option was also chopping the ends of the branch and trunk tips, leaving me staring into hollow tubes (which I had incorrectly assumed meant they weren't fully exportable). I am going to revisit Carrara's plant generator now that I know this.
@jaebea, I also have a lot of Xfrog plants, and once I figured out how to import them, they work fine. However I am hoping to create my own custom plants that I can eventually sell in a product, which I cannot do with those.
@wendy♥catz, thanks for the info! I don't animate myself, but rustling leaves sounds cool.
@Kerya, thanks for the link, I'll check it out.

Szark

My peasure Sean. I like Carrara plant room as you can make so good shaped trees bent in to some nice positions.

zigraphix

Another free tool is here: http://ngplant.sourceforge.net/

I know Carrara and Bryce do trees, but I need to create some smaller plants, like herbs. I really need to get into those two programs and see if I could use them. I can't afford xFrog right now.