FAQ

The subscription system tries up to 4 times to process the monthly renewal payments.

On the day of the renewal, 24 hours after attempt # 1, then 48 hours after attempt # 2, and finally 72h after attempt # 3 (so 4 payment attempts on the course of 6 days).

At every failed payment the system sends a “payment failed” e-mail like the one you have received.

At failed payment # 4, the subscription gets canceled entirely, and you will receive a cancelation notice.

When you receive the first failed payment notification e-mail, the only thing you should do is to check with us and/or your bank why the payment would have been declined. On our end, we only receive sparse reasons in these instances. Nonetheless, one of the main reasons we see is when the bank automatically refuses transactions from abroad – and the solution to that is to inform your bank that this would be a valid recurring transaction – so that they can add us to your/their trusted vendors.

Your bank is your best contact though to get more specific reasons as to why your payment was declined.

If you receive 4 failed payment notifications and the cancelation notice, then your subscription will be canceled completely, and you will have to re-subscribe (i.e. place a new order) to resume using the products.

While you will find your payment method information on your main user account page, under the "Account Settings" tab and "Payment Methods" link, the actual payment method that is tied to your live subscription is to be found in your Subscription details.

So you should go to the "Orders tab", in the "My Subscriptions" link. This is where you will be able to update / edit / add / delete your credit card information, as well as update the billing address information per subscription.

Canceling a monthly subscription is allowed for Creator and Professional solutions monthly subscriptions at any time. However, for Enterprise solutions you may cancel your monthly subscription plan only after 12 monthly installments were successful.

To cancel your subscription, go to your account page, under the "Orders" tab, you will see a "My Subscriptions" link. This is where you will find the cancel option.

Unfortunately, there is absolutely no relation between monthly subscriptions and annual licenses. When you switch to an annual license, you must cancel your monthly subscription from your user account to avoid being automatically charged your monthly renewal.

During the last month of validity for your annual license, the software will start warning you that it is time thinking about renewing.

Step 1 – renew: You just need to place an order online for any of our Solutions (there’s no restrictions on you changing your Solution level when renewing). There is no dedicated extension product in our store. Once your order will be finalized, you will receive a new activation key with your invoice. Keep this activation key secured (you can always find this back on your user account, in your order details anyway), as you’ll need it for step 2.

Step 2 - extend: 7 days prior to your current annual license expires, the software will prompt you a new dialog and offer you the opportunity to input your new activation key. Grab your new activation key and enter that in the dialog. Add the other necessary information in the dialog and let the software finalize the automatic activation process.
Note that your current license at this stage will still be valid, so we recommend you only apply the new key once the previous license is completely expired (so that you don't lose any overlapping license use-time).

Step 3 - enjoy: Once the automatic activation process is finalized, you're good to go!

Absolutely not!

It is not mandatory to own VUE and PlantFactory to use PlantCatalog. PlantCatalog comes with its own standalone tools (PlantCatalog Exporter, and a set of 3rd party importer Plugins) so that you're up and running without any additional hidden costs.

You can of course use the PlantCatalog collections directly in VUE and / or PlantFactory though (provided you activate the PlantCatalog within each application - see below for more information).

The importer plugins are currently compatible with 3ds Max 2019-2021, Cinema 4D R20-R23 and Maya 2019-2020. The importer plugins will automatically generate native materials for a subset of renderers:

• In 3ds Max, the plugin can generate native materials for Arnold, V-Ray 5 and older, Scanline and ART Renderer.
• In Maya, the plugins can generate native materials for Arnold, V-Ray 5 and older, and native Maya shaders.
• In Cinema 4D, the plugins can generate native V-Ray 5 and older materials, Arnold materials and standard C4D materials for standard and physical renderer.

The plugins will also generate host-generic material sets, and therefore should be compatible with any 3rd party renderer (such as RenderMan, Arnold, Corona, Octane, RedShift etc.)

Other host applications and renderers will be supported soon while we continue to expand our interoperability developments. You will get access to any new importer plugin released for free while your PlantCatalog (resp. PlantFactory Professional or Enterprise) license is still valid.

With the PlantCatalog Exporter, a procedural plant is baked to a standard 3D file format that can be imported into many applications. Standard 3D file formats cannot contain any advanced material information, so you will probably need to adjust the saved materials in the target application.

The plugins, on the other hand, detect which render engine is currently selected in your DCC application, and will create appropriate materials and shaders for that render engine. In other words, you will receive e.g. proper native V-Ray materials when V-Ray is the currently selected render engine. This saves you the need of editing the materials on the baked polygon mesh to create a V-Ray material manually on your own. 

Additionally, the plugins contain the full procedural editing capabilites of the PlantCatalog exporter. You can make changes to the procedural model at any time inside your scene without the need for repeated export - import workflows. So we suggest using the plugins over the PlantCatalog exporter wherever possible.

First, if you own an Enterprise Solution (monthly or annual), the PlantCatalog is already built in, you just need to download the PlantCatalog archive files from the Software Center tab on your user account page and add the content to your collections following the read-me file instructions you will find in each of the archives.

If you own a Creator or Professional Solution (monthly or annual), you first need to place your order for your PlantCatalog activation key from the store. Once your order is complete, you will receive an Activation key by e-mail, together with your invoice. In the software (VUE or PlantFactory), go to the Help|Activate PlantCatalog menu entry. Input the activation key you have received, enter your e-mail in the dialog, and let the software activate itself.

Once the automatic activation is successful, go to the Software Center on your user account page, and download all PlantCatalog archive files and add the content to your collections following the read-me file instructions you will find in each of the archives.

Since we release new species every quarter, keep an eye on our blog and/or social platforms for the announcements. You’ll then just have to go to the Software Center again to download your new collection content for free and install that following the above process.

First you need to place your order for your PlantCatalog activation key from the store. Please note that PlantCatalog Creator licenses won’t work with PlantCatalog Exporter, nor with the integration plugins as these PlantCatalog Creator licenses are specifically designed to work only with VUE and/or PlantFactory Creator.

Once your order is complete, you will receive an activation key by e-mail, together with your invoice. Go to the Software Center tab on your user account page and download the PlantCatalog Exporter application installer. During the install process, your activation key will be required. Input the activation key you have received when prompted, enter your e-mail in the dialog, and let the software finalize installation and activate itself.

Once the installation is completed and activation is successful, go to the Software Center on your user account page, download all PlantCatalog archive files and add their content to your collections following the read-me file instructions you will find in each of the archives.

Since we release new species every quarter, keep an eye on our blog and/or social platforms for the announcements. You’ll then just have to go to the Software Center again to download your new collection content for free and install that following the above process.

Yes, you can, however, you won’t be able to export your customized plant species from PlantFactory Creator to anything else than VUE Creator.

In VUE Creator, you will nonetheless be able to use the PlantCatalog content directly from the collection browser.

We therefore would recommend you get PlantCatalog Creator instead, as it will be a better deal for you.

No, the software will reject the key and prompt you to get a regular PlantCatalog License.

If you have purchased a PlantCatalog Creator by mistake, please contact our Sales support to discuss possibly exchanging your license.

No, the software will reject the key and prompt you to get a regular PlantCatalog License.

If you have purchased a PlantCatalog Creator by mistake, please contact our Sales support to discuss possibly exchanging your license.

Yes and No.

No: Technically the PlantCatalog assets were authored in the most recent PlantFactory builds and use the most recent PlantFactory feature sets. Therefore, it would be impossible for a legacy VUE or PlantFactory to open the plant species as is. Additionally, PlantCatalog is tied to the licensing mechanism we introduced with the current solutions (RLM based) which the legacy products can’t work with.

Yes: Legacy VUE versions can load generic geometry assets, such as .3ds, .obj or.dae (the latest legacy versions of VUE 2016 can also load .fbx and .abc). So technically speaking, you could get PlantCatalog Exporter (which requires a full PlantCatalog license) and export the plant species as standard geometry to use within your legacy VUE software. You will however not be able to retain the procedural definitions within VUE (to populate EcoSystem with different instances for instance).

So it’s not technically impossible, but we strongly recommend you get under the most recent versions of VUE and PlantFactory to give the PlantCatalog content its full potential.

No, the PlantCatalog is an annual license-based offering, where you get access to the entire vegetation collection together with all associated software tools, incl. all new quarterly species additions, while your license is still running.

Yes, we collect user requests to prioritize our species development roadmap. The more requests we get for a given species (or plant type, region, biome etc.), the quicker it’ll get developed. You can submit your request (please be as specific as possible in your initial request) using the PlantCatalog form at the bottom of the PlantCatalog page.

If you are in a rush or have very specific vegetation needs that are not addressed by the current offering, we can also offer custom development deals. Contact us using the PlantCatalog form at the bottom of the PlantCatalog page (please be as specific as possible in your initial request), and we’ll start the discussion.

All the meshes you will have exported to standard geometry formats (such as .OBJ, .FBX etc.) will continue working and are yours to keep and use (even commercially) forever - provided you stick to the EULA terms (see the Can I resell [...] FAQ article below for more information).

Nonetheless, when your license expires, all species part of the PlantCatalog won’t be useable directly within VUE, PlantFactory, PlantCatalog Exporter and/or the integration/importer plugins.

All the species you will have derived from the official collections using PlantFactory and saved as PlantFactory format (.TPF or .TPFP) will also be unusable.

After your PlantCatalog license has expired, opening a VUE or PlantFactory scene that would include official or derivative PlantCatalog content in native PlantFactory file format will prompt a warning and offer to replace or skip such content.

Yes, there’s nothing preventing that. However, please understand that your right to use the collections starts once you have activated the PlantCatalog license and is valid for a period of 365 days after that. So, to get the most bang for your bucks, we recommend you keep your Solution monthly plan running during the whole duration of your PlantCatalog license.

We will NOT prorate (i.e. extend) PlantCatalog usage, should you use the stop and restart option for the Creator and Professional monthly subscriptions. We will also NOT refund unused time for your PlantCatalog license should you completely cancel your monthly plan.

In short, no. Using the PlantCatalog is subject to your acceptance of our standard End User License Agreement (EULA). This EULA states that it’s perfectly fine to create images/animations that use the built-in content (even if you intend to sell those images/animations). What you are NOT allowed to do is to export such content – altered or not - and provide it elsewhere, be it free or for a fee. This is valid for both the vegetation geometries, but also all texture maps and additional content that ships with the PlantCatalog.

Example # 1: you can use and embed the PlantCatalog content (original or modified) within your games, provided there is no way for the end user to extract and re-use the content from the engine.

Example # 2: you are in violation of the EULA if you sell or share publicly a plant species you have created from scratch, but such species uses any of the texture maps (unchanged or modified) that ship with the PlantCatalog content.

You may however use the PlantCatalog content as a mean of training yourself and learning on how to create your own vegetation species from scratch using PlantFactory 😉.

There’s no one size fits all answer to this question 😊

It depends on the vegetation itself (weeds won’t have the same polygon footprint as the giant Sequoia 😉), at what stage it is in its maturity, what’s the chosen mesh resolution etc. Since it’s procedural based as well, every instance will have its own polygon count. It also depends on whether you want quads or triangles. There’s an ID card for each species in the species galleries, that gives more details with regards to polygon count for any given species. All plants are provided at default mesh resolution of 0.4 but you can play and ramp this up at will. In PlantCatalog Exporter, the info menu option gives precise info about all this so that you can set the plant exactly to your own requirements before exporting (same information is displayed in the 3^rd party importer plugins too). We tried to be as flexible as possible here and let you set the species quality you really need.

Texture maps are custom tailored to each species as well. When there’s no need for an 8k map (for instance flower pistils…), we did not include 8k maps. Overall most of the maps range between 8k and 128p depending on what the map caters for, and the given quality (HD/LD/RT). We’ve tried to pre-optimize all species so that you have fewer editing steps afterwards.

First of all (as of February 2020), RT quality content is a brand-new addition to the catalog (as opposed to HD/LD content being already available for Enterprise Solution users since the initial release in December 2018). Therefore, you can expect more RT quality species to come (for the existing species) progressively.

Additionally, when there’s no need for an LD version, we won’t develop it as the benefit of LDs isn’t worth multiplying the references (hence fewer LDs than HDs). There’s currently only one species that has no HD version, which is the Giant sequoia. That’s on purpose as it would be practically unusable ‘as is’ in any DCC tools – using the vegetation in its full grandness. Given the physical size of that particular species, HD quality would only be useful for closeups on branches or the trunk (and even in LD, the branches and trunk details are already pretty decent 😉), and therefore overloading the destination software with the full plant geometry when you only need a few branches in your shot would be an overkill.

You can find all the information needed on our official Cornucopia3D announcement, here. 

You may have had some unspent funds on your Cornucopia3D account (outside of any free vouchers you may have received). Due to our original terms of service agreement, we are unable to process any refunds. Instead you can request this to be transferred to your account on the new e-commerce platform.

To begin your request, please fill in the form here, and make sure to provide your full information so that we can find your account as fast as possible (i.e. the e-mail address your C3D account was linked to).