Bionatics Grows Virtual Plants.(Product Announcement)

Bionatics, (formerly JMG Graphics), is launching three market-specific plant creation applications that are based on AMAP technology, which has been developed over the last quarter of a century by the French government's agronomy and biology agency, CIRAD. The three applications offer strikingly realistic plants for modeling and animation, simulation, and architecture. Using virtual "seeds" from a large database, users can create botanically accurate plants, with each plant seed capable of producing tens of thousands of individually distinct plants.

natFX, launching at this year's Siggraph, is a plug-in designed for modeling and animating 3D plants. Real-time plant-tuning functionality allows users to specify the age, season, and scale of each plant. Animation is possible either as a realistic effect (with botanical constraints) or as a cartoon effect (bypassing the constraints), using natFX's built-in plant skeletons. All natFX trees and plants are fully textured, based on scans of actual leaves, stems, and bark.

natFX is currently available as a plug-in for Alias|Wavefront's Maya. A plug-in for Discreet's 3ds max is planned for December 2001. Pierre Kueny, application engineer at Alias|Wavefront, worked with Bionatics to develop the natFX plug-in for Maya "The realism of the trees is ...