Hi,
What paid vegetation add-ons would you recommend for exterior archviz? What are yours pros and cons provided add-ons you used? Grass/lawn is priority followed by trees, shrubs, hedges and so on. I should probably mention that I have somewhat weak GPU 2060 Supper. Having said that I use E-Cycles.
Thanks,
T
I find Botaniq to be really good, it has a nice selection of grass.
For close-ups, I would go with Graswald.
Also, one must-have add-on for scattering is Scatter 5, which already comes with a good selection of biomes.
I don’t do archviz, but I do use vegetation add-ons for motion graphics.
Thanks for your input 
Does the Botaniq have tricks like Scatter 5 not to throttle your viewport? I saw some educational Scatter 5 videos which showed exactly that.
Price wise Botaniq is currently $129 and Scatter 5 $99.
At the moment I am comfortable to pay $100. $129 is a little too much.
My only use will be archviz for now though.
I was looking further into all types of add-ons today. There are quite a few to be honest. Newest that I came across is by Bproduction: Grassblade, Gardener and Vegetation. My head is spinning already. Maybe grassblade and gardener lite versions would do?! Let see.
Gardener, from the BM description, is for Bushes, Hedges & Shrubs.
When I looked at Grassblade, I ended up going with Vegetation. To me, something looks off in the Grassblade results, maybe it’s the saturation, or the overall materials, but the look doesn’t feel natural to me.
Vegetation is good, though if you like to customize the path of your assets like I do, you’ll be in trouble with it: the assets need to live in Blender’s add-ons folder (I think it’s almost 12gb of data).
Another minor issue I have with Vegetation is that, every time you add a new asset to your scene, the selection remains on your last selected object. So, I always end up moving the wrong asset. Nothing too crazy, but a little annoying.
The third problem is that when you add an asset to the scene, it’s not organized in categories.
Then, and this is a deal-breaker for me, the assets are not linked, but appended, so you end up with gigabytes of scene files (unless I missed something).
I reached out to the developer about the issues, he said they would look into them, though I was the first asking about the collections. I didn’t hear back since then. So, I tend to avoid Vegetation, which sucks because the quality is good, and it’s not a cheap add-on which now sits unused on my hard-drive.
Then I bought Botaniq: well organized (none of the above-mentioned issues), and in case of problems, there’s a pretty active Discord channel.
So, my personal choice when it comes to vegetation are: Scatter, to scatter stuff around, nothing gives you more power than that, and Botaniq when I need extra elements. Botaniq also has a great choice of grass, which seems to be your priority.
About the “tricks”, Botaniq has some features, though not as advanced as Scatter.
But its options can already come in handy:
And then you have this in Scatter
If the price is too steep for now, you can wait for a BM sale, or go with Scatter, and add another vegetation add-on later.
BagaPie should be cheaper, and gives you some options for the display tricks you’re looking for.
Hey!
Glad you joined conversation and thanks for some detailed overview which helps me a lot to determine what I should go with. At the moment I am leaning towards Scatter 5. The only thing that holds me off from immediately pressing buy button is I may need some gravel/pebble/stones not much but still. So I was wondering if Scatter 5 has anything at all of it? If not I need to find some viable solution. I don’t mind to pay an extra $10 for anything worthy but buying let’s say Botaniq lite for $49 is a little too much for me at the moment. If I can manage it this will be it to start with.
BY the way is it possible to change hue and saturation on assets in Scatter 5 and Botaniq? How flexible are add-ons in that respect?
T
Yes, Scatter comes with some stones, and pebbles.
A quick test using some built-in biomes:
You might also want to check this tutorial:
Keep in mind that with Scatter is very easy to add your own assets to the scene. In fact, you can download free assets of any type, pebbles, grass, trees, and then scatter them.
The abiotic alone in the latest release is so useful, and fun to use
Lastly, you can tweak the materials. I think there was an issue with Botaniq combined with Scatter in Blender 3.1 about the materials, or something like that, but honestly I can’t remember exactly what that was about. You should be able to find more info in that regard in the Scatter thread here on BA.
Hope that helps!
Scatter 5 does not have trees. Botaniq does have trees. Grasswald is more or less only grasses and small plants. Scatter 5 would be my preference over Grasswald, but if you want trees, you’ll need to look elsewhere. If $129 is too much, you can wait for a sale - there are amazing sales sometimes. Vegetation looks pretty nice, but you’d have to buy a separate asset pack or addon for grasses.
For me, Botaniq had the widest range of assets for the best price. There’s also Sequoia, though it doesn’t look as high quality as Botaniq. Might be more resource lite though, and is quite a bit cheaper.
Scatter has trees, and so does Botaniq.
Thanks that is great news for me about some pebble and rocks. Abiotics is an amazing feature. The more I red about it the more I realise it’s potential. If one delves in to the essence of creating credible landscape abiotic is a must be feature.
Yuor mini scene looks so natural to an eye. How many samples did you have and how long it took to render it given your GPU is? Is the background ( hedge, tress) actual photo? If so masterfully done. If all is nothing but render than camera FOV looks very natural
Really appreciate Scatter 5 tutorial you shared with me.
I kind of wonder why nobody mentioned BlenderKit 
You get over 700 models in the Nature category, and overall you get more than 10 000 models
Hi Folks,
Creator of the Scatter5 plugin here
Just to clear out the confusion, we are dedicated plugin developers, we focus heavily on the plugin and workflow of our product. Please don’t mix us with asset makers Our base library should only be considered as a “starter library”, exactly like the starter library of DecalMachin3 or MeshMachin3 for example.
Blender is quite a unique beast in the vegetation product range,
Historically, assets have been combined with “library” plugins for years now due to the lack of a proper asset management solution for decades. Fortunately, we finally got our asset editor in blender 3.0 so we’ll be able to centralize all our libraries in the same place!
Cheers
Dorian
I’ve use Blenderkit on many occasions which suits certain needs very well but what I found out about Scatter 5 or Botaniq is actual workflow and set of unique tools integrated in workflow that ticks the box. Free version or $6 a month of Blenderkit is a reasonable price in my opinion, it has the use for sure.
Thanks for reminding us about it anyway
I get what you’re saying, but I’m not sure you’re giving yourselves enough credit. It still is an excellent library with excellent assets and a decent variety thereof so it functions quite well as a vegetation asset library. Grasswald is a dedicated asset library and it doesn’t have trees either, and I’m pretty sure has less assets as well.
Thanks @neb it’s actually just the viewport at 256 samples with denoise.
The BG is an HDRI, I actually pushed the DOF too much, but I wanted the focus to be on the assets from Scatter.
One quick question. Can you make trees and/or grass react as if a wind blows on Scatter 5? I think it’s possible on Botaniq.
I think I got my answer here on the Scatter page : “The plugin has a wind-wave feature, creating the wind in the scattered instances.” But still wonder if you done so far?
I think if you’re looking for some generic animation added to the scattered trees, you have this in Scatter 5
If you need something more detailed, like wind affecting the leaves, then you have that in Botaniq, but not in Scatter, unless I missed something.
Yes, I mean some basic animation. No need for flying leaves etc. I may want to include some tree animation for next archviz.
It might work, depending on how close the camera is. I think it could work if you have a very distant camera, and lots of trees, but if you have only a few trees, with the leaves visible enough, it might look odd that the main trunk is moving while the leaves don’t.
If I have time, I’ll prep a couple of examples, one in Scatter, and one in Botaniq. But I can’t promise anything atm due to my work.
Maybe there are already some renders around that can help you decide.
Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxCL6aA4Lo8
and, in case you want to play with the free version: https://polygoniq.gumroad.com/l/botaniq-trees
Sorry, I somehow completely missed it on the Scatter 5 page which clearly states : Wind
The wind-wave feature will create the illusion of wind flowing in your scattered instances. Ideal if you want to add realism in your fields or grassy areas with only one click.
Botaniq indeed does wind simulations. I found it watching other youtuber, having said that Justin from CG Essentials jas a lot of info in regards to both Scatter and Botaniq.
You helped me tremendously already. Thanks you so much for taking time and effort. Unless you want it to do for fun feel free to do it otherwise I am sure you have more things to do in your life than replying to a random guy on this website like me
