To whom it may concern,
We are Landscape Architects and absolutely are enamored with Enscape (Almost...). The part that has become the biggest bottleneck for us is the lack of useable plant materials and lack of people. Yes there are plants and yes there are people. Just not the ones we use in Southern California.
It would be helpful to see more trees, shrubs, grasses to different climates, and more, more, more.
Ideally Enscape would have a better reciprocity with Evermotion and integrate their whole library or at least have Evermotion make Sketchup to Enscape trees that someone seems to be making for Enscape incorporation for ease of purchase at a lower cost than MAX trees that are too big to use. I have contacted Evermotion and the best they could do is advise on low poly trees and mid poly trees which are extremely limited in their scope.
If Enscape were to have more plants and more people it would easily be the best render engine that I have encountered. The people should be even more diverse, more people sitting, more people by a pools, more generic people, and even more people that are not specific. This is a request as it is impossible (or I have not found it yet) to edit the assets that are within the Enscape shell. What I would like to do is take maps off of people to make them partially transparent and all one color. For us this helps the client to focus on the features and not the persons clothes or face.
Can the plants in pots not have pots. This goes along with not being able to edit the assets. Many of the plants are ok, but with pots it seems silly to plant the pots in the soil with pots.
While Enscape has come far in the last 5 years and even farther incrementally in the last 2 years, it seems the library has become a bottle neck for our use as Landscape Architects.
We work in California where almost none of the trees are applicable.
I have looked everywhere online and have not found cheap, easy, useable trees or plants that work as well as the ones within the Asset Library. This is a tremendous quality to Ensccape that should be the focus as the renderings are coming out amazing as far as lighting / reflections / materials / foliage / grass / glass etc.... That is great, however there is a limit and we have reached the limit to the useable plants and useable people.
I have attempted to incorporate Evermotion 3d models into sketchup to no avail. I have used their test models to understand and attempt interoperability between programs (which should not be that hard conceptually). I have tried into Blender as OJB / FBX and even minimizing the polys (too much time and effort).
Although there are Evermotion assets everywhere within Enscape there actually needs to be more for Enscape to make the biggest step yet. We are always tempted by Lumion, but prefer Enscape as it is directly within Sketchup and there is no exporting of models as there is in Lumion.
If Enscape is to become the rendering program of Lanscape Architects everywhere and leave other programs behind, you should focus on the Asset Library and bring that to where it should be in this day and age of all there is online. We should not have to buy a tree here and there piecemeal which will eventually cost way more than one license of Enscape when you can actually meet the desires and requests that we have been asking you from the start of rendering. You should look at Landscape Architects as a resource to be embraced much like you embrace Interior Designers, Interior Architects and Architects. The fact that you have 906 accessories and pieces of furniture to the 125 (or less) useable assets in the 522 "Vegetation" category goes to show that your are missing a very large profession that could be tapped for sources of sales in the future.... Should the Assets become a priority for the program.
109 which are in pots and considered indoor plants
111 which are weeds, annuals or cacti
88 which are Vines, Topiary or rocks
63 which you wouldn't normally plant on purpose (background trees, invasive, or forest), bamboo or have fall color
26 Palms that aren't ones planted on purpose or other than focal trees
69 OK trees - many oaks / maples / not applicable to Southern California
56 OK shrubs - almost none of which are native to Southern California.
Thank you,
Jay Rohrer
