Plants and Trees in Revit: RPC’s, Full Geometry Plants and Vray RPC Proxies.

Plants, trees, shrubs and grass are some of the most sought-after families in Revit since they bring realism to the renders and they make the spaces look cozier/alive. Plants (we will use the term plants to refer to plants, trees, shrubs, grass) can be found in three different formats: RPC’s, full geometry plants and Vray RPC proxies. Each one of these has its own benefits and we will discuss them in this post so you can make more informed decisions on when to use each type in your projects.

RPC’s have a great advantage over full geometry plants: they are very small files and the user can work with large amounts of them in a project without overloading the file/workflow. Revit comes with a good number of RPC’s plants already installed in its default library and after inserting them in your project, you can get a very decent looking render right off the bat. RPC’s are basically pre-rendered images of the plants from different angles that look “good” in every situation. RPC’s can be rotated to give a different look to the plant and they can even be scaled to vary the sizes. Being pre-rendered images from different angles, RPC’s don’t fully interact with the lighting conditions of the scene. While you can get an approximation of the light, the end result tends to look flat and in many cases (and depending on the position of the light or sun), their shadows look flat (this is because it’s literally a flat image of a nice tree put on a card), especially when the sun is hitting them from the side. This is definitely a big giveaway that the tree is not a real 3D object. For quick renders, RPC’s work great, but for professional photorealistic renders, they might not be the best option available.

Full geometry plants, on the other hand are actual 3D objects that fully interact with other objects and with the lighting conditions of the scene. These types of objects look a lot more integrated and natural in any render. The downside of full geometry plants is their file size, which, depending on the plant and the number of times you insert them, it can increase the size of the file quite a lot. Also, the more full-geometry plants you insert, the slower it will be to work on the software, unless those plants’ display is optimized in Revit. Another disadvantage of full-geometry plants is that they are generally created in other software programs, and when imported into Revit and rendered with Revit’s default render engine, they tend to look faceted, which makes them not suitable for close-up renders. Finally, one last disadvantage of full-geometry plants is their lack of mapping coordinates, which makes it impossible to use textures on (we can use colors only, but not actual textures). These types of plants are ideal (and look great) for mid to background planes, where we can’t see full details of the textures of the petals, leaves or trunks. They also look great as table centerpieces or on side tables, as long as they are not extremely close to the camera.

Luckily for us, we now have Vray for Revit, which takes care of these two issues for us: the size of the file and the faceted look. Plants created in other programs and exported to .vrmesh or .vrscene files can be read into Revit through the Vray tab or you can create your own RPC families that you can later on substitute with any Vray Proxy file. One important consideration about Vray proxies (.vrmesh or .vrscene files) is that they are not pre-rendered images put on cards (like the RPC’s discussed earlier), but actual 3D geometry (written in a special Vray format that makes it very small) that fully interacts with the scene (like the full geometry plants). These types of plants (Vray Proxy) certainly bridge the big gap we had with the other two described before, and now our renders look photoreal, with no faceted surfaces, with correct texture mappings and still keeping our file sizes small. These Vray proxies or Vray RPC Proxies (custom Revit’s RPC families that are later on substituted with Vray Proxy files) are ideal for any type or render, whether they are extremely close to the camera, on the midground or on the background. These are by far the best plants to use in Revit, but you need to have (buy) a Vray* license in order to use them. Download our free Vray Proxy plants so you can explore them and see how they look in your renders: Poinsettia, Bromeliad.

In our Blackbee3D website, you will find full geometry plants as well as Vray Proxy plants in .vrmesh and .vrscene formats, which will make your renders truly stand out from the traditional Revit renders. At Blackbee3D, we are committed to offering the best plants for Revit on the web, so visit our plants selection periodically, since we will be adding new plants regularly: Click here to view our plants selection.  Review the descriptions carefully to make sure you get the right type of plant for your project (either the full geometry plant to render using Revit’s render engine or the Vray Proxy to render using the Vray plugin for Revit) since Vray Proxies ONLY render with Vray and not with the regular Revit render engine.

* For more information about Vray for Revit, visit www.chaosgroup.com