Hi,
In the past I used a plugin to connect Vue to 3ds Max.
Vue was a very powerful program to create beautiful landscapes. Within this program I was able to create a sort of D5 brushes to paint vegetations or fill some areas with a list of plants and other stuff.
The most important feature was the height and the weight for each layer of plants. For “height” I mean the program was able to scatter the vegetation on the various heights of the modeled terrain.
But I never updated Vue, so I decided to replace it with Forest Pack which was better integrated in 3ds Max.
In Forest Pack Pro I don’t have the same Vue layer capabilities but I can decide the weight for each plant (model) used.
After having filled an area I can adjust the weight for each plant, the density, the xyz offset/scaling/rotation separated for each direction, the fall-off manually or through a curve, the pattern used to fill an area. For example I can create a regular grid of trees or use a procedural texture to decide the various movements of the vegetation. I can create a carpet of grass filling a text shape.
Last but not least: Clusters. They are very important to create agglomerates of vegetations.
I think the D5 team could improve the landscape design feature.
Regards.