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.

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 are up and running without any additional hidden costs. You can of course use the PlantCatalog collections directly in the most recent versions of VUE and / or PlantFactory though (provided you activate the PlantCatalog within each application - see our full PlantCatalog FAQ for more information).

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.

The plugins are currently available for 3D Studio Max, Maya and Cinema 4D. Other applications will be supported in the near future.

Supported 3DS Max versions and render engines:

• 2019
• 2020
• 2021
• V-Ray 5 and older for 3DS Max
• Arnold for 3DS Max
• Scanline & ART renderer

Supported Maya versions and render engines:

• 2019
• 2020
• V-Ray 5 and older for Maya
• Arnold for Maya
• Maya Software renderer

Supported Cinema 4D versions and render engines:

• R20
• R21
• S22
• R23
• V-Ray 5 and older for C4D
• Arnold for C4D
• C4D standard and physical renderer

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 question 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, you are allowed to use all plants in commercial projects, be it for moving or still images or for embedding models into compiled applications such as games, provided that they cannot be extracted by the end user.

Please note that you may not resell or distribute plants from the PlantCatalog on 3D marketplaces. See the following question for more details on commercial use and our EULA.

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 means of training yourself and learning how to create your own vegetation species from scratch using PlantFactory.