Greenworks Xfrog 3.5/4.x

Despite the new features, we still prefer the more intuitive set of components and the dedicated real-time environment provided by Xfrog 3.5. But being able to access Xfrog from directly within the 3D application certainly opens up whole new avenues of power and creativity. With the ability to add any object to the hierarchy and to use advanced volumetric materials, it's possible to use Xfrog 4 to produce some beautiful abstract imagery. And when you take into account Cinema 4D's excellent mesh editing, rendering, deformers, animation and detail handling, you can see why Greenworks has decided to go down the plug-in route.

Whether standalone or plug-in, Xfrog provides the most powerful dedicated organic modelling available, but there's still one major drawback. If you just want to drop a believable tree or flower into your scene, you're talking about a huge amount of work to build it up from scratch. By comparison, other options, such as Vue Professional (see issue 113, p94), with its SolidGrowth technology, let you generate a variation on a preset plant species in just a couple of clicks.

Although Xfrog does offer similar convenience, you'll have to buy one of the 16 XfrogPlants libraries in order to take advantage of it. These are divided into categories such as European and American Trees, Groundcover and Flowers, each containing 20 different species represented in three or more different varieties or different stages of growth. Each high-quality XFR model is a botanically correct labour of love and comes complete with digitised images of actual leaves, petals and bark. Crucially, the results are stunning. Best of all, with the plug-in versions of Xfrog 4, most XFR files can be imported either as ready-to-render meshes or ready-to-customise Xfrog objects.

If realistic 3D plant handling is only an occasional requirement then Xfrog is almost certainly overkill; but if it's central to your work then Xfrog becomes essential.

Author: TOM ARAH