By: Erik Vlietinck
Mon, April 14, 2008 - 5:15:00
Pros: Good rendering, easy to use, helps creativity, art generator on a level of its own
Contras: Less suitable for traditional ("ordinary") commercial work

http://www.groboto.com
Score:

Groboto is a 3D system with a twist. Groboto can mean “Grow a Bot”, or it could mean “grow your 3D object using robots”. I guess it’s the latter, as Groboto is a system that enables you to create complex 3D art by letting the software do all the hard work. Imagine yourself being like a god and controlling 3D drawing “bots”, then you’ll get a feel of what Groboto is. One thing is sure: it’s not your every day 3D creation tool, and as such it’s more of an art tool than something you can use for commercial work --although you never know…

Groboto has drawing robots and scene robots. Except for these two robot types, there are also the traditional 3D primitives we all know. To work with Groboto, you don’t need to know much about 3D. You can drag a scene robot in the main window, and it will automatically expand into a 3D object. You can select a drawing robot, click anywhere in the main window, and the robot’s components will automatically draw according to the rules the robot is set to follow.

The difficult part begins with setting those rules so a robot does something that you want. Now, setting these rules is easy: you just drag some sliders and set some parameters, and watch the robot change its behaviour. The difficulty is that you don’t know how the rules will work out, unless you know how Groboto works. The crux here is that only its developers really know how the program works.

A 3D Art System

This introduces some randomness in your work, which is pleasing if you’re drawing 3D art, but can be frustrating if you’re in need of some very specific construction. The robots in Groboto create constructions. Some of these are bizarre, others are quite plain. Any type of plain drawing behaviour can be instantly changed into something more esoteric or exotic. A drawing robot, for example, can be adapted to your own needs --you can also build a robot from scratch-- so that its components include tubes, cubes, rings and other items that can be individually adjusted.

Drawing with such a robot will then create a contraption that includes all these components in the order you defined, but abiding by rules you set before starting to draw. This allows for an almost infinite number of possibilities. It also makes it so that most results created with Groboto are exotic to some extent. That makes Groboto less suitable for commercial 3D work, where you want to re-create the real world on a virtual level.

On the other hand, Groboto’s results will almost always differ from one session to another. Even when using the same robots, I was never able to repeat the exact same results as in a previous session. The creative possibilities therefore are endless, and you can literally build creatures and environments that are out-of-this-world.

Groboto lets you have just enough control so that you can translate your ideas into something that resembles those ideas in the digital world. It will never allow you total control unless you memorise the endless variations that are possible with each tool. That is where the strength of Groboto lies: it is simply impossible to get stuck in “habit”, because there’s no such thing in this application as a habit, a “default” or a “standard”.

By itself, Groboto has a render engine that is good enough for most art created with it. There’s a good lighting model and an excellent fog generator which is one of the easiest to manipulate. If you want to use Groboto to create and output strange creatures without first going through another 3D program that has better rendering capabilities, you can and you won’t be disappointed by the results.

However, I personally feel that Groboto gives me enormous capabilities when used in tandem with for example Vue Infinite. Groboto is then used to create the creatures that will populate my Vue world. Vue’s rendering capabilities are still a lot better than Groboto’s, although its fog and atmosphere settings are a lot more difficult to fine-tune.

For commercial work, I think you won’t use Groboto too often. For art and to set your imagination free, Groboto is enormous. It’s on a level of its own.