Download a program for designing soda tracks. Landscape design programs - paid and free. Landscape design. Styles and directions

When a person has a dacha or just a plot of land, he is faced with the important question of how to properly manage the territory. You shouldn’t dig up everything, build, mark out everything at once. It’s better to start by reading the relevant literature and asking experienced gardeners for advice. When designing, you will need to take into account many different nuances, for example, how to correlate the site with the cardinal points (this is necessary in order to correctly position all future buildings). Generally, The planning process is a rather complex and costly process.

You will need to delimit a space for buildings, a recreation area, and a parking lot. All this is decided before the house is built. The fact is that from the first days you will need somewhere to sleep, relax, and have lunch. You can first build a temporary shed, and later move it to the utility block.

In general, there is a lot of work to be done. It is important not to make a mistake anywhere and plan everything in advance. Landscape design programs will help you with this. On the Internet you can find a huge number of ready-made layout options, but how nice it is to create and implement your own project based on your preferences and tastes.

Today there is more than a hundred different landscape editors that offer different functionality. It can be quite difficult to figure out which program is best suited. We will help you with this.

How to choose

First you need to determine your level of preparedness. For example, if you are not particularly good with technology and have only mastered basic computer knowledge, then it is better to give preference to simple home programs.

You will be required just enter the parameters of your land plot and choose from ready-made models presented in the database (there are quite a lot of projects, there will be plenty to choose from).

But, if you are serious, you need to create a drawing or layout with your own hands, then you will need a graphic editor with extensive functionality. Unfortunately, utilities for detailed model creation are not officially distributed free of charge. To work, you will have to purchase a licensed product (download a pirated version) offered by the developer.

Five best programs for home use

The advantage of home editors is that they have a very simple and understandable interface for everyone, they are distributed free of charge, allowing almost everyone to create their own site layout and change already available projects to suit their needs. This is really convenient; sometimes it is very difficult to understand what an idea will look like when implemented in life. We'll tell you about the five most convenient and functional landscape design programs.

X-Designer – garden plot planning

This is perhaps one of the simplest programs for designing landscape design. It does not require the user to have any knowledge or skills in operation. It's very easy to understand.

The program is easy to download and install (we downloaded), but the utility can be easily found using a search engine).

It’s not difficult to figure it out, it will take the average user no more than 10-15 minutes. First, you just need to enter the type of your plot, indicate its dimensions, set the date and other parameters. For example, let’s call our plot “my plot” and choose dimensions 60x80. Next, select the month, date and time of day.

Then all that remains is to fully plan the structure and select decorations from the library (quite a large selection of models). As an example, let’s take our site and display a house (the dimensions of each object can be changed, for example, specify the slope, dimensions, etc.).

Each plant is accompanied by a voluminous card, which describes how to care for, water and its characteristics. You can also monitor in real time the changes in the flower bed in the coming years, taking into account the characteristics of the growth and development of the selected landscaping.

The program is convenient in its simplicity. Like X-Designer, it is very easy to understand (it will take no more than 20 minutes to learn the basics and get into the process). You can download it using a search engine (we took the program).

After opening, you will need to choose whether to create a new design, open a plan from a computer, or edit a template design.

A new design means planning a project from scratch. For example, let's create a small area measuring 5x10.

Next, we will build a house, the same as in the previous program. Let's place a tree lantern and a bench. It will look something like this:

It is much easier to change an already prepared plan than to create a completely new one. However, your own design will help take into account all the details of the site and your wishes.

As in the previous program, here is presented a huge selection of objects and tools for working with the site. All of them are divided into categories to make it easier for the user to find the right model.

Tools are needed to create a site. With their help, you can mark out the territory and create the necessary areas. A distinctive feature of the program is its simplicity, it is easy to learn and it makes it possible to schematically evaluate the layout of your site.

SketchUp

Functional utility for creating projects. It allows you to develop a full-scale landscape design and carry out preliminary preparation and territory planning.

There are two versions of the software - free and paid. The first is suitable for home use, allowing the user to take advantage of all the necessary functions. The second is needed for commercial purposes of companies and ordinary designers.

The easiest way to download the program is through a torrent client or the official website (you will be provided with a temporary free license).

One of the most significant advantages of the utility is its collaboration with third-party Google products. For example, the service allows you to automatically exchange data with Google Earth. This is truly convenient, because you don’t need to create a three-dimensional model of the site manually, but you can simply take a ready-made one from the globe, which will fully correspond to the real parameters. This material is easier to work with.

However the average user will find it difficult to cope with this program. It is complex, because it allows you to work out each element in detail. SketchUp is more suitable for experienced designers; if you need such a detailed design, then it is better to turn to a professional.

Our Garden Rubin 9.0

This program is a kind of Russian version of Sierra (an excellent design program, but it is not translated into Russian). All the possibilities are similar, and the implementation methods are similar. The program is divided into several blocks, each of which is designed to solve a specific problem. If you use the entire range of functions at once, you can get a completely finished landscape design project for the territory.

One of the main advantages of the utility is that the interface is translated into Russian. It is distributed free of charge, which means it does not offer huge functions and is designed for the average user.

Yet again, the program is good because of its simplicity. An ordinary summer resident does not need complex and detailed plans, and he is unlikely to be able to create something similar on his own (it is better to contact a designer).

The program is quite simple, so even an inexperienced user can handle it (about 10-15 minutes is enough). When launched, the main screen opens with a ready-made site template.

Let's create a new plan. The program provides a large selection of models and template options that can be changed at your discretion.

First you need to mark the territory, then install objects in place as desired. For example, let's build our house with a bench, a lantern and trees.

After creating a two-dimensional plan, you can view the result in 3D. By the way, a whole assistant is provided for caring for plants.

Our Garden 6.0 Omega

Another version from the “Our Garden” series. It allows the user to create their own projects for planning or designing areas based on a digital photo.

The main advantage is the possibility integration of the plan with regular photographs. The program provides information about 7.7 thousand plants available for work. The selection of soil, flowering time, zone, timing, etc. is also provided. With the program you can easily create your own flower garden, which will continuously please the eye.

The layout you create can be viewed in 3D at any time (saved). You can specify different times based on which the plants will change in shape and size. Large amounts of information are provided regarding the care of flower beds of various types and the fight against harmful diseases. Our Garden 6.0 Omega can be an excellent option for those who want to create a cozy place in their dacha, decorated with amazing flowers and plants.

The functionality and process of creating an object is the same as in Our Garden Rubin 9.0.

There are not only computer versions of garden design software. If you don’t want to deal with the interface of conventional utilities, then you can use online options. They are very easy to learn (simpler than all those mentioned above), but the working methods are also simplified. The bottom line is that online versions do not have even a fraction of the capabilities that full-scale programs provide. But with their help you can get a schematic sketch of the layout of the territory.

Which video lessons should I choose?

For those who don’t like to learn at random, here are training videos. The material below is the first video in a whole series of lessons. This is not to say that this is a high-quality educational material, but in general it is more detailed and lively than other lessons presented on Youtube, and can be a good help for intuitive learning.

When developing a design project for a personal plot, it is very important to have a visual representation at the different stages of its preparation. Landscaping, garden accessories, paths and ponds - all this can be organically and simply arranged using landscape design programs. Let's look at free apps.

Common to all: what to look for when choosing

When developing design projects, you should be guided by the principle “the simpler, the better.” If a certain software product satisfies the requirements in the context of a specific project, there is no point in chasing advanced tools for creating high-level graphics.

Most design visualization programs have primarily a presentational purpose. This is important when doing custom work, but if the development is carried out for yourself, mastering complex CAD mechanisms will result in an ineffective waste of time.

In the practical development of landscape design, you should always leave room for imagination. It is unlikely that you will be able to fill the one-to-one scene in the foreseeable future with the same elements that will take place in the real physical world. Therefore, the primitivism of objects in the virtual environment and the low degree of detail are more of a benefit than a disadvantage. They make it possible to evaluate the general, global side of the design without being distracted by minor details.

Considering the above, we recommend paying attention to software marked “for beginners”. Also of great importance is free access to educational literature authored by the creators of the program or the developers using it.

It is worth noting that the lack of a Russified version of the software usually does not become an obstacle when developing simple gardening and landscape design projects. Also keep in mind that the concept of free for this kind of software is very conditional: even professional tools have a trial period, during which it is quite possible to develop your own project, but you will not be able to use a paid program for commercial purposes.

Working with Content Libraries

The basis for working with most landscape design programs is the use of ready-made elements from a standard set. You simply create a scene of the required dimensions, and then place the necessary content on it: lawns, paths, buildings, trees and decorative paraphernalia.

One of the most popular free products, Sierra Land Designer, contains several modules with the ability to freely import projects between them. The strength of this kit is its impressive library of garden plants, complemented by recommendations for climate suitability, planting, care and life cycle features. The program suffers from a weak visualization tool: the garden planner has a two-dimensional top view, but after layout the project can be viewed in a rather modest 3D visualization module.

A developed community of users plays an important role in working with landscape design. SketchUp, for example, although not designed as a program for detailing garden plots, has an extensive library of 3D models that have been previously created and used by other users. Sketchup does not have a built-in encyclopedia of plants, but it allows you to create a visual environment with a high degree of detail and variety.

The golden mean in terms of libraries and display quality is FloorPlan 3D. The program has a developed set of components and design templates, both ready-made and third-party. And this doesn't come at the expense of usability or graphics.

User Interface Differences

Almost all programs differ in their individual layout of controls. This directly determines ease of use, speed of development and completion of the project.

For example: SketchUp has a very wide range of tools for editing and moving objects. They are located on two panels in different parts of the screen and can be customized individually. The same feature distinguishes most CAD programs (Autocad, ArchiCad, etc.): everything that should be at hand is located on the main editing screen, and all additional modules, such as setting the parameters of individual models, relationships between them and tools visual display are located in additional internal windows.

A slightly different organization scheme is used in programs that are specifically aimed at garden and landscape design. In Sierra Home&Land Designer 3D and 3D Home Architect Design Suite Deluxe, working with the project and its components is divided into stages, each of which has a separate module with its own tab. Switching between them is absolutely free; at any time you can go back and, say, reconfigure the global parameters of the scene or the properties of a group of objects.

Visual environment

Most free programs do not claim to provide high-quality graphics processing with good realism. But in their segment, they still differ from each other in the method of visual presentation and the degree of image elaboration.

The simplest programs, such as Expert Landscape Design or Garden Planner 3, are designed to effectively arrange objects on a site plan. 2D overhead views, purely schematic displays and, with rare exceptions, the inability to set up and film a scene for presentation are the hallmarks of programs designed for low-level design.

There is a special class of landscape design tools that use photographs to construct scenes by collaging them or rendering pseudo-3D. This group includes Realtime Landscaping Architect and 3D Home Landscape Designer. They allow you to walk around the site in three-dimensional mode and have the opportunity to film the project scene from unique angles or simulate conditions of changing weather and time of day. The main function of such programs is to automate the manual processing of photographic materials in graphic editors.

The best detail and photorealistic rendering are used by such 3D modeling “monsters” as Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, Punch Home Design and SketchUp. These programs do not (with the exception of special plugins) have the means to work specifically with landscape and park design, but they allow you to work with sources of natural and artificial lighting and fully support shadows. This is possible due to the rendering included in a separate program module, therefore, with some effort, you can take incredibly realistic pictures of your virtual site. Unfortunately, such opportunities are quite expensive: the programs have high system requirements and take time to master.

User level

The potential complexity of interacting with a program can be assessed by the range of its capabilities. Placing elements of a standard library on a plan using Expert Landscape Design does not require any preparation at all, while setting up a high-quality display in Sierra Home&Land Design can require several hours of attention and a number of unsuccessful attempts.

Don't forget that in the long run it's better to start with mid-level programs such as SketchUp or the more specific Complete Landscape Designer in order to master the full range of basic CAD capabilities for landscape design.

Help in this matter will be free and paid literature on developing projects in a specific program, various thematic forums and communities. For almost all of the programs described, there are series of videos with examples of work, from which you can evaluate the capabilities and control scheme of the program in a matter of hours.

Recommended sequence for developing your own project

Finally, we will suggest the optimal sequence of actions that will allow you to master most of the software’s potential in two or three evenings and quickly develop your own project. When you decide on the choice of program, study 3-5 lessons demonstrating work with both individual models and their groups and entire scenes, explaining the very concept of development.

When creating your project, start by designing and setting up your global scene. Remember that objects can be grouped and hidden once you've finished working on them, so you can focus on specific areas of the scene. When individual details have been worked out, start arranging them globally.

At the final stage, work is carried out with the special capabilities of the program: setting up materials, textures, lighting, simulating different conditions and angles. Obviously, the project will not gain physical implementation in one day, so you should return to the virtual plan of your site from time to time to look at it with fresh eyes and finalize small details.

The dream of owning your own home usually starts with a simple drawing on paper and a lot of questions. Already at the planning stage, it is important to correctly place all the buildings on the site, to clearly imagine where the gazebo or garage, paths, flower beds, garden, and pool will be located.

There are special programs for visualizing construction and landscape design projects, some of which can be mastered independently . Programs for site planning allow you not only to draw up a plan with all significant objects marked on it, but also to see a three-dimensional 3D image and walk along the marked paths live. With their help, you can “plant” trees and plants in a flower garden, taking into account their adult habit, “build” a house, a gazebo, and even design an irrigation system.

Landscape design programs there are:

1. Paid and free
2. For professional landscape designers and amateurs
3. Designed for working with drawings or for 3D visualization.

Paid professional program for landscape design and design in 2D and 3D.

The developer is the American company Idea Spectrum. All the company’s activities are devoted to the creation and improvement of the program, the first version of which appeared in 2006.

On the Internet on various file hosting services you can find links to the free program Our Garden Rubin 9, which is no longer supported by the manufacturer.

X-Designer

Punch! Home & Landscape Design

Landscape design software Punch! is part of the product line of Encore Software (USA).

Punch! series programs declared by the developer as a powerful tool for creativity, which contains all materials, tools, textures, furniture, accessories, plants with a description of their life cycle for creating and designing landscape design of a highly realistic level.

The program contains many standard modules that you can edit to your own taste and even add to digital photographs or scanned plans of your site. At the end of the work, the user will receive drawings, photographs and 3D visualization of their project. One of the advantages of the software is its compatibility with Sketchup.

Several versions of the program are offered for sale, the cost of which varies depending on the functionality and content of object libraries (from 39.99 to 199.99 dollars). Punch! Home & Landscape Design Architectural Series v19 is a complete version for professional landscape designers and architects, with which you can design both houses and plots. Its cost is $399.99.

An intuitive interface, the presence of a huge number of freely distributed lessons and books on working in SketchUp (including on the developer’s website) allows almost anyone to master the art of 3D modeling. All created models have exact dimensions. The result of the work is immediately reflected on the screen - from the sketch to the finished project. You can view the project from various points of view “from the first person”, as in computer games. A huge number of ready-made objects are offered both by the developer himself and by many forums dedicated to the program.

The paid version includes SketchUp integration with Google Earth, which allows you to download a satellite photo of the area and design directly on it. It is also possible to set exact geographic coordinates for an object and thus obtain information about the insolation of the site at different times of the year.

The paid version of SketchUp Pro has greater capabilities in the field of animation, presentation of projects and export of files to other formats.

comparison table

Competent landscape design allows you to improve a certain area. To achieve the best effect, it is recommended to create a design layout of the area you are going to work with in advance. Specially for this purpose, programs have been developed that allow you to make sketches and professional design layouts of developed areas.

About existing programs

You can find several programs and services that offer the opportunity to work on your landscaping project. Some of them are paid, others are free. There are also those that allow you to work online and do not require downloads. However, such services are not capable of providing very much functionality and are unlikely to be suitable for professional designers.

Regarding the programs, among them there are also small and easy-to-learn options that are suitable for beginners, but not for professionals. Professional software is mostly paid and is not easy to learn, but it allows you to create serious design projects and produce beautiful renderings of the project. Professional software also requires more computer processing power.

Realtime Landscaping Architect

This program is suitable for intermediate level users. It contains many elements that can be placed on a hypothetical site. Plus, the program has a simple and pleasant interface, has a clear logic of actions, which will allow you to quickly make some kind of sketch.

In this program you can expand existing libraries of 3D models, work with a site plan, and even animate some objects. Additionally, you can make notes and captions to elements (groups of elements on the work area). To make your project more realistic, you can change the relief using brushes (you can add them from the Internet).

The software is distributed free of charge, but has an English-language interface. Finished projects can be beautifully visualized and even animated to be shown to a particular audience.

As a result: the program is great for amateur projects and even for professional sketches.

Archicad was originally developed for the design of buildings and surrounding areas, taking into account the terrain. However, its functionality also includes built-in capabilities for working with landscape design projects. It also has built-in libraries of elements that can be expanded, plus there are greater possibilities for creating drawings and estimates compared to Realtime Landscaping Architect.

It is more difficult to model the terrain here, since it uses a grid with points, rather than brushes, as in many other landscape design programs. However, here you can quickly create a realistic relief model using topographic and geodetic surveying of the area. However, there is one significant limitation - it is impossible to create parametric landscape elements, for example, garden paths, in the program using standard tools. To somehow get around these restrictions, you will have to resort to tricks or download special extensions from the Internet.

The program is entirely in Russian. Another advantage is that drawings created in this software will fully comply with GOST requirements. As in Realtime Landscaping Architect, here you can set marks for one or another element. However, Archicad is more suitable for simple landscapes that are created for the main building project.

As a result: Archicad is designed more for designing buildings than landscapes, but the program has almost all the necessary functionality.

Our Garden Ruby

Our Garden Rubin is a program from a domestic developer, which does not have very beautiful visualization of projects, but it is completely free, has a simple Russified interface, as well as a very large library of plants. The software will primarily appeal to farmers and gardeners, for whom the visualization of the project is not so important, but rather the location of certain elements on the site. Among other things, you can get all the basic information on plants that are in the program library.

On the one hand, the program does not provide the user with any interesting functions or beautiful graphics, but on the other hand, any user can master it very quickly, and it takes up virtually no space on the computer and consumes very few system resources.

X-Designer

This program has much in common with Our Garden Rubin - a very simple interface in Russian, the ability to create simple projects, free download and use, low requirements for computer configurations. However, there are also differences, for example, the visualization in X-Designer is slightly better, but the plant library is much smaller (and it cannot be expanded).

Also, a distinctive feature of X-Designer is the ability to reflect a certain time of year when working with a project. You can adjust the presence of snow cover, foliage on trees and its color. This program also implements a terrain modeling system, which is very poorly developed in Our Garden Rubin.

X-Designer is a simple program for completing amateur design projects, but it is somewhat outdated, so more complex projects are out of the question.

Autodesk 3ds Max

This is a very feature-rich program for professionals. In it you can do not only landscape design, but also modeling various 3D objects. This software does not limit creative freedom in any way, since you can create the necessary 3D models yourself, or download ready-made models from the Internet. Also, the functionality can be significantly expanded using numerous plugins, both paid and free.

However, the program will require a lot of time to master, since it was created exclusively for professionals. In addition, it is not a fact that you will be able to understand its huge functionality on your own, so you may have to turn to special courses. It is also worth considering that 3ds Max is not a free program, it is very expensive, and the demo period is only 30 days.

Here you can create a very detailed and beautiful project of a house and plot, working out each object in as much detail as possible. In addition, you will be able to present your project to the general public in a beautiful visualization. But you should understand that this may take a lot of time.

In addition to its price and difficulty in mastering, 3ds Max has another significant disadvantage: it is very demanding on computer hardware. You cannot do some complex projects in this program because your computer is too weak.

Punch Home Design

Compared to 3ds Max, this program is significantly inferior to it, especially in the quality of project visualization. In terms of its characteristics, Punch Home Design stands somewhere between Our Garden Rubin and Realtime Landscaping Architect. There is no need to talk about high-quality visualization or a complex interface here, but the software is completely free and has wide functionality for building a model of a house and surrounding area.

One of the advantages of Punch Home Design is the presence of templates that you can use and change in your projects. You can also add your own templates, or those taken from the Internet. You can also work with drawings and diagrams, but the capabilities are greatly reduced compared to Archicad.

However, the program is significantly inferior in terms of terrain elaboration not only to 3ds Max, but also to Realtime Landscaping Architect. Also, the program still does not have normal Russification. Despite all the shortcomings, Punch Home Design is used not only by amateurs, but also by professionals.

Envisioneer Express

Another simple software for working with drawings, projects of buildings and local areas. This program is more like a simplified version of Archicad. True, the visualization here is not the best, plus the fact that the program was originally developed for designing buildings makes itself felt.

Envisioneer Express boasts an extensive and expanding library of various objects: interior elements, exterior building decorations, landscape design elements, plants, etc. Also, using the program, you can compare your design project with existing drawings and estimates, or create them yourself.

The program also has the ability to visualize various scenes, although the visualization is much inferior to products such as 3ds Max.

FloorPlane 3D

This software was also developed to work with sketches of buildings, but at the same time there is also the opportunity to work out the landscape design of a house area, however, this functionality is very formal. The program's interface is also not the most friendly and pleasant - there is no translation into Russian, and the interface itself is crammed with incomprehensible controls.

Visually, this program is little better than Our Garden Rubin or X-Designer. But despite all its shortcomings, FloorPlane 3D can sometimes be effectively used for atypical projects, but this is the exception rather than the rule.

SketchUp

SketchUp is a program designed for fast 3D modeling, inferior to 3ds Max in functionality and visuals, but at the same time has a significantly simplified interface and lower requirements for computer hardware. It is also suitable for landscape design, but it will be more difficult for you to find designer functions or a large library of elements there.

Professionals use this software solution when the speed of project development comes to the fore, rather than its presentation and/or detailed elaboration. This program will also be convenient for ordinary users.

Additionally, this program can be used as an educational program for novice designers who will have to work with 3D objects.

About online services

In addition to programs that need to be downloaded and installed on your computer, there are also online services that allow you to plan your home space; however, such services do not have much functionality and high-quality visualization, but they will allow you to make a quick sketch of the project.

There are not many free online services on the Internet that allow you to develop your own landscape design project.

Online garden planner

This is a Flash application that can be integrated into individual sites using a plugin or code. Today it can be found on several portals dedicated to dachas, children and/or landscape design.

You can go to work with the online planner using this link.

This extension will require an updated version of the Flash player to work. Here you can make a very quick and primitive garden sketch using elements from the library, although there are very few of them there. You can save the finished project on your computer or print it immediately.
Within the framework of this article, popular solutions for designing landscape design of the local area were considered. Many of the programs presented can be mastered even by a user who is no stranger to computers.

Which computer program to choose for landscape design and design, so that you can implement and test your ideas in it, so that there is decent 3D visualization? This question arises as soon as there is a desire or need to take a computer as an assistant.
In this article I will try to give general information about popular programs used by landscape designers, and it’s up to you to decide what to choose based on your capabilities and needs.
Computer programs used for landscape design can be divided into three groups:

• 1) drawing programs;
• 2) programs for 3D visualization of landscape projects;
• 3) programs for 3D modeling and graphics

Drawing programs

This group includes such popular programs among architects and designers as AutoCAD and ArchiCAD.
These are very good and quite difficult to learn drawing packages designed for the design of architectural and construction structures and solutions. In landscape design, they are used to draw general plans and dendroplans, layout plans and irrigation plans, road and drainage networks. Their disadvantage, from the point of view of landscape design, is the lack of plant libraries. The appearance of plants in 3D mode is very conditional. The visualization quality is poor. Knowledge of these packages is highly desirable in large architectural and landscape companies. There are quite a lot of courses that teach how to use these programs.

Programs for 3D visualization of landscape design

These programs were created specifically for landscape design and design. They are designed for 3D visualization of projects. The created project or its fragment can be immediately seen in 3D volumetric form. At the same time, the drawing part of such programs is often significantly inferior to programs from the first group. As a rule, these are not complex or not very difficult programs to learn. Among the programs in this group there are quite primitive ones (for example, FloorPlan Landscape, Expert Landscape Design 3D, Complete Landscape Designer, X-Designer and others) and good, powerful packages, such as Punch Home & Landscape Design from the company Panch and Realtime Landscaping Architect by Idea Spectrum. These last two programs have good 3D visualization, a large number of settings, texture fills for all designed elements, and large libraries of objects.

The capabilities of good computer programs for visualization are approximately the same: the presence of libraries of plants and architectural forms, modes of shadows, growth, changes according to the seasons, the ability to create relief and various special editors. A common disadvantage of most programs in this group presented on the Russian market is that they are not translated (the interface, program descriptions, explanations are all in English) and that the range of plants presented in these programs is generally not suitable for our climate.
is one of the best programs for 3D visualization of landscape projects. Its huge advantage over the best foreign programs is the Russian interface and a unique seventeen thousand encyclopedia of plants, more than half of which grow in Russia and the former USSR. And, of course, the ability to add textures, 3D models, plants and photographs to the program.

Programs for 3D modeling and graphics

There is also a whole group of programs, such as Photoshop, Google SketchUp, CorelDrow, 3D MAX and some others, which are often offered to students who want to learn computer-aided landscape design. These programs were not created specifically for landscape design and do not take into account its specifics. Many of them are difficult to study on your own. But, if you have mastered these programs well, you have gained experience and have everything you need: ready-made objects, trees, houses, previously created scenes, etc., then you can quickly create a beautiful project.

Adobe Photoshop and CorelDrow Graphics
These are graphic editors (raster and vector, respectively) designed for layout (CorelDrow) and editing of graphic information, such as magazine illustrations, photographs, slides, etc. (Photoshop). These are programs of medium complexity, very popular and there are many textbooks and courses teaching how to use them.
CorelDrow often used to create planting drawings, diagrams, general plans. Decent vector drawings are obtained.
Photoshop Some landscape designers use this: the client’s site is photographed and objects, plants, houses cut out from other photographs are placed on this photo in the editor. Either an application, or a collage... The result, in my opinion, is not very good, although there is a lot of “fussing”.

3ds MAX, 3D Studio VIZ, Blender
The programs are not designed specifically for landscape design; they are universal 3D modeling products. 3D Studio VIZ has a tree editor with customizable parameters for creating various tree models, and there are building templates: windows, doors, stairs. But it’s more convenient to use 3ds MAX. This is a highly professional product for creating various 3-dimensional scenes, objects, specials. effects and animations. It has a large number of plugins that significantly expand the standard capabilities of the program and contain additional modeling tools. Difficult program to learn. Creating and visualizing a project requires a lot of knowledge and time. Time to search for objects (trees, bushes, houses), time to polish them, time to develop your own objects and, finally, time to render. This is a lot of work and not everyone can do. But, I repeat, if you have mastered this program well and accumulated libraries of objects, the result will be impressive: the visualization of the scene is extremely photo-realistic.
Blender can be called a free analogue of 3ds MAX. This is a professional program for creating 3D computer graphics, animation, video editing with sound and interactive games. Currently the most popular among developers among free 3D editors. Has a reputation for being difficult to learn.

Google SketchUp
This is a non-professional, uncomplicated and easy-to-use program for modeling simple three-dimensional objects, mainly architectural. It was not created specifically for landscape design. It is possible to add the ground surface to the model and adjust its shape - relief. There is a shadow mode at any time of the day. Does not have an encyclopedia or plant libraries. But there is a wide variety of different ready-made 3D plant models in Google's publicly available online collections.

Daz Bryce
The program is intended mainly for creating and visualizing complex real and fantastic 3D landscapes. This is for big professionals. There is the possibility of complex overlays of fog and haze effects. Bryce allows you to control haze, clouds, sunlight, simulate rocks, stones and water, large libraries of materials and environmental characteristics, and a wide selection of rendering parameters.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I will report my observations: from many conversations with visitors to landscape design exhibitions, I am convinced that people try to do projects on the computer in what they know (even in Exsell!), often spending an insane amount of time and effort on it. But those of them who are professionally and successfully engaged in landscape design on a computer, as a rule, use several programs in their work, most often a combination of drawing (AutoCad / ArchiCad) + programs for 3D visualization (Our Garden / Punch! / Realtime). Those who make very expensive projects, participate in competitions, often use a combination of programs (AutoCad / ArchiCad) + 3ds MAX.
Well, for those who “design” for themselves and their friends, who carry out small projects, just one 3D visualization programs, for example Our Garden Ruby or Crystal.