News

Since its release, Forest Ivy has received a number of updates to improve its flexibiblity and ease of use. These changes give artists more freedom when creating climbing vegetation, making it easier to guide ivy growth, work with displaced surfaces, and achieve better results in a wider range of renderers.

Import and Export for Growth Paths

A new option allows users to bring in or save out the paths that guide ivy growth as standard 3ds Max splines. Instead of drawing a new path with a pen tool directly on a surface, you can start with a pre-made one, making it easier to work with architectural plans, CAD files, or manually edited curves.

Ivy Without a Surface

Previously, ivy needed a surface to grow on when using base splines. Now, it can be guided purely by an imported path. This is useful for more intricate shapes, such as spirals or free-flowing designs, where ivy should follow a path through space rather than cling to an object.

Support for V-Ray 7 and Chaos Vantage

Forest Ivy is now fully compatible with the latest versions of V-Ray, including the GPU engine and Chaos Vantage. This ensures that ivy looks its best, whether prioritizing high-quality final images, fast previews, or a mix of both.

Collision Detection with the Ground

A new toggle checks if ivy should stop growing when it reaches the ground, even if there isn’t a separate object in place to act as a barrier. The height of the Forest Ivy gizmo sets where the ground is located, simplifying setup when working on large environments.

Keep Ivy Clear of Walls

When growing ivy on a displaced surface, such as a wall with a texture that pushes geometry outward, parts of the ivy might get buried. A new offset setting shifts the ivy outward to compensate, ensuring it stays on top rather than inside the structure.

Each of these updates makes it easier to control how ivy grows, interact with different surfaces, and get better results faster.

Existing customers with an active maintenance plan can download the latest releases of ForestPack by visiting the “My Products” section of your user panel. If your maintenance has expired, don't worry—there’s no penalty for lapsed licenses. Simply renew it from the Licenses section of your user panel to restart your maintenance and access the latest versions.

Download latest versions!

If you’ve yet to upgrade to ForestPack 9, there's never been a better time as it includes ForestIvy, our brand new plugin for creating climbing plants including a comprehensive library of presets. There’s also surface scattering improvements, optimised point clouds and memory management, ForestSet updates, and much more. Check out our blog post to learn all about the new release.

Learn more about ForestPack 9