Apparently all the assets including the textures and models are now free for commercial use. which mean most of them can be redistributed with blender.
Which also mean a lot of add-ons that depend on selling textures like “the Grove” leaf asset packs and the like, are going to get a big hit
With PlantCatalog now being available for free, am I allowed to sell exported assets derived from PlantCatalog files?
In short, no. Despite PlantCatalog being freeware, all plants are copyrighted by Bentley Systems. You may use the models commercially (e.g., embed them into games, share them with clients, or embed them into project files) and you may create renderings, both still or animated, using PlantCatalog models.
However, you may not resell any models derived from PlantCatalog content on marketplaces. If you want to sell plant models, you may create your own models from scratch in PlantFactory while making sure to not use any textures or metanodes from PlantCatalog plants.
Given the language as a whole, when they say “(re)sell” here I would take that to include free redistribution as well. Anyone wanting to repackage PlantCatalog assets for Blender would need to seek clarity on that point or potentially face copyright infringement. Commercial use in this context usually means a rendered scene or animation that you mean to sell copies of, or game that has DRM to stop users pulling the assets for other uses.
Plants made using the software are fair game to sell though, and with a bit of fiddling people could probably import PlantCatalog assets into Blender and share them among their own studios I guess. There isn’t a linux version so I can’t really check it out. But I reckon any hit for add-on and asset creators will be short term unless Bentley actually decide to waive their copyright. Since they are neither maintaining nor opening up the source to the software I imagine it will be forgotten within a year except by the people who already have it/get it now and swear by it and use it till it no longer runs.
Yes, I imagine that people will try to monetize these FREE assets which will reduce scarcity and potentially lower the value of certain assets classes in the Blender market.
However one could argue that the FOSS nature of Blender itself has the same effect on certain classes of the Maya,Max game asset market.
Also “no tech support” likely means no branch within the Bentley company chasing
down reports from the masses about illegal reselling of vegetation that “looks like” they came from Plant Factory.
I guess someone will still create an add-on bridge, and it will amount to the same effect, a large hit for this kind of add-ons … and a lot of plant packs on the market, probably most of it free as a publicity stunt…
E-on Software FAQ
Am I allowed to use VUE, PlantFactory, and PlantCatalog for commercial projects?
Yes, you may use the products commercially. This includes any renderings created with the software or assets exported from the software. You may retexture, remodel and resell any of the stock content which ships with VUE and PlantFactory. This includes both meshes and textures.
However, please be aware that you may not sell any content derived from PlantCatalog models (see the next question).
With PlantCatalog now being available for free, am I allowed to sell exported assets derived from PlantCatalog files?
In short, no. Despite PlantCatalog being freeware, all plants are copyrighted by Bentley Systems. You may use the models commercially (e.g., embed them into games, share them with clients, or embed them into project files) and you may create renderings, both still or animated, using PlantCatalog models.
However, you may not resell any models derived from PlantCatalog content on marketplaces. If you want to sell plant models, you may create your own models from scratch in PlantFactory while making sure to not use any textures or metanodes from PlantCatalog plants.
Hello,
Daniel from e-on software / Bentley here.
Indeed, you cannot package any PlantCatalog models into Blender. As rightfully stated in a previous post, Bentley holds the copyright on these models, so they may neither be resold nor repackaged.
However, anything you create from scratch on your own with PlantFactory can be sold, distributed and packaged with no restriction as you see fit, including the original PlantFactory source files with the full node graph.
Hi,
First thanks for these free assets.
I was wondering about the additional plant factory library installers.
I installed a few but they do not seem to add any new species/types to the library.
Any specific tutorials online/YT that can assist me in accessing these additional plant types?
( I am looking for exotic alien plants for sci fi environments )
Hi Anabran,
you need to download all PlantCatalog archives and install them to get the full collection. What you see in the content browsers without downloading the items are preview thumbnails, and when you click one, you will be asked to download the corresponding plant archive from the website.
The plants cover real-world species only, so if you are looking for SciFi plants, you might want to start learning PlantFactory to create them yourself. We will gradually upload more tutorials that we had planned for later this year over the coming days and weeks. This includes many tutorials for learning PlantFactory from scratch. The videos are not yet fully edited, however, as we put all of our focus on compiling the freeware builds. Hence why some last tutorial content will gradually drop on our YouTube channel.
Later today, you will find an introductory video on our channel about how to use PlantCatalog plants in PlantFactory, so keep an eye out for it.
…and the book. 
Hi Daniel,
Out of curiosity, before it was decided to discontinue PlantFactory, was there ever a consideration of making a linux version? I’m aware no such thing will ever happen now even if there was, it’s a purely academic question.
Might see if I can get it running with Wine or in a VM…
It would also be “nice” …if they open the source… 
…because free is nice… but unsupported… people wil not be able to us it… maybe in windwos 12 ?? ( i do not know the ditching cycle for mac ) 
But there are some on blendermarket.com search-> Addon : plant…
Using Debian linux 
…so not really interesting for me(, too).
oh…what a beautiful experience to read a book like that.
Thank you for sharing this.
It has many tips that are good in 3d arts, not just Vue.
Hi Jvry,
a Linux version was actually developed three or four years ago for both VUE and PlantFactory. It was nearly finished (according to the developers about 90%), but for reasons unknown to me, the development was put on ice and the Linux version never saw the light of day 
Quite a waste of resources.
By the way, VUE and PlantFactory have extensive export capabilites. You can use VUE and PlantFactory to create assets with ease, then take them out of the apps and render them somewhere else.
We would eventually have created some kind of bridge to Blender which would have facillitated material setups (just like we did for other apps such as C4D or Maya) with automatic node network creation for each material and mapping the material properties from VUE / PF to Cycles BSDF properties.
I would like to maybe tackle this on my own at some point in the future, but I have yet to learn Python. If someone knowledgable with Blender plugin development would be interested in this project, feel free to get in touch with me. Both VUE and PF have Python APIs on their own, so my current idea without any Python experience would be to write out VUE and PF material property values into a CSV file (texture map paths, normal intensity and so on) by executing a Python script in the apps, and then read this CSV in Blender through a Python script or an actual Python addon and let the script create the node network in Blender for the materials automatically.
Here’s the video with everything you need to know about PlantCatalog. How to use PlantCatalog - Introduction (youtube.com)
Sad news about Vue being EOLed. This said, releasing it for free is a very nice move. I’ve used Vue extensively 15 years ago with Vue 4 and 5, then I moved on other softwares ; and switching to Linux made me completely forget about it. But I still have fond memories of this soft and its nice community in Cornucopia3D.
I am currently downloading VUE, to see if it runs in Linux trough Lutris/Proton. It may come in handy for specific terrain creations or HDR skies.
I’ll let you know if I have any success.
I am still a bit confused
EDIT: nevermind, I got it all sorted on how to export plants from both plant factory and Vue .
Well…
No luck with Lutris/Proton for now. I’ve tried with several versions of Wine, several configs and winetricks, but no success. It installs but fails to launch (at least, Vue, I didn’t try plant factory) and the log in not quite helpful as it returns a code 0 error…
My distro/config :
POP! OS, Ryzen 5600X, RTX3060 and 64 GB of RAM.