# Software for aquascaping



## dukydaf (Aug 31, 2004)

I want to beg for a computer program which has lots of plants, rocks, wood and different coloured substrates and backgrounds.
I tried to make this using acdsee fotocanvas and corped the pictures of plants but it's hard to make it.
I also tried the software for freshwater aquariums but they have so little diveristy of plants.
This program has the purpose to make aquascaping more easily and to see what your aquarium is goig to be like.

So anyone interested to make this prohram or probably we should make a group of members who works on this??
For the administrators of this site and for the enlargement of APC we should make it free for members.

Anywone and any ideas will be welcomed.


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## AquaticMagic (Aug 9, 2005)

I would like to help up if you guys need me.
I can do some C, C++ and VB stuff.


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## Jdinh04 (Oct 7, 2004)

You can't really judge the look of your scape by using a software, to be more ideal scape the tank with what you got.


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## Raul-7 (Feb 4, 2004)

Jdinh04 said:


> You can't really judge the look of your scape by using a software, to be more ideal scape the tank with what you got.


But maybe using virtual imagery, you can get a pretty good idea of what the tank will look like.


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## kimbm04r (Apr 22, 2005)

I agree. It would be nice to be able to have a virtual image of a tank to get an idea of what it may look like with this plant or that plant, this fish/shrimp and so on...

And if you could import hardscape items into it it would be even better.


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## balloon_fish (May 26, 2005)

very great idea  i've always wanted an easier to arrange plants around to where i wanted it. But there area also a lot of factors aren't there? like growth patterns, reddness, things like that. But they shouldn't be too much of a big problem though, maybe have a few choices like for amount of watts over size of tank and then decide how tall plants would be. What i mean is you could have a low-med lighted tank and try to grow glosso and when you are using the program it wouldn't be realistic cause the glosso is all tall and everything and people would be dissapointed it didn't turn out to be what they would like it to be. But if there ever was such a program that would really help


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

About 3 years ago a friend of mine and I wrote the beginning of an application that was meant to do just that - allow you to arrange decorations and plants in a virtual "tank".

We never finished it but here's what we had implemented:
- User set "tank" dimensions that reflect the width/height ratio + depth "gidelines"
- Plants database
- Decorations database
- Substrate database
- Fish database
- Ability to add your own images to all 4 databases
- Ability to move, flip, resize, and position decoration, plants, and fish behind each other

The code was written in Delphi and the images were png. What really stopped us was the unavailability of quality plant images. The Tropica images that we used for tests made the aquascape to have a flat dull look. Mainly because of that we lost interest.

Looking back that was quite a good idea and we did a pretty good job. I don't remember the many features that we wanted to add. Knowing what I know now I think shading and lightening of parts of the objects will be a good addition - it will help create a more natural look.

In any case such software will have an application and it's probably going to find popularity in Asia too. But I think that if the look of the tanks created with such software is rather artificial then the software is not good.

--Nikolay


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