What exactly are trees and plants in iClone? They differ from props in several ways and they can sway in the wind.

I found a thread from 5 years ago which seems relevant:
Trees and Plants




But animagic makes it clear that this is just his take on it. Is there any official word if that's correct? If not, how does it work?

Also, this tread from a year ago makes it sound like Speed Trees work similarly.
Trees and Plants



Here's a snippet from another related thread from 2 years ago:
Question about live plants



It sounds like there's no official answer, to this day.

I have the Pipeline version of 3DXchange, as well as the Total Plants-Biosphere Collection. Is there any conceivable way for an iClone user with the right software tools (as opposed to a developer) to modify a regular tree or plant in a way that allows us to not only import them in iClone but get them to sway in the wind?

(I've seen some very cool looking alien plants and weird trees that I'd love to import into iClone. And I wish I could emulate the wind effect on such.)

I was hoping to export an itree just to examine it in a modeling program.  But if it's impossible to export them...

I think the answer is, "What is SpeedTree?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpeedTree

Maybe that doesn't answer your question, but they are not normal props.

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the only other thing you can do is rigged trees or trees with morphs from other apps, the latter needs to be done with a dummy bone and expression editor.
I have used Carrara trees that way but they are very highpoly and become nonstandard iAvatars so not duplicatable like props. 
There are a few rigged tree creating apps like treeD that does FBX export.
e-on has a  Vue  plant creator called Plant factory you can try a demo of that also does FBX but is rather pricey to buy.

oops mtakerkart I should read other posts
just adding the demo removes polys so you get rather mangy trees but useable

To exporting this from iClone is SIMPLE.... BUT NOT ALLOWED!

For me it means "You can't" , it's what I teach to my children ;-)
I really appreciate that reallusion make a deal with speedtree like UDK or Unity made to allow us creating
trees with speedtree and export directly in Iclone format:

http://www.speedtree.com/

Can you "Export" SpeedTree objects from iClone

Not at all...... 
I tried drag and drop in 3dxchange: no success

Then what good is "3dxch PIPELINE" if you can't export EVERYTHING?

That's why I own only the pro version ;-)  The only think I export is some meshes for morph or paint task.

Since Reallusion refuses to allow users to export iTrees (or iPlants or iGrass), or add dynamic wind to any sort of imported plants, the least they could do is allow us a bit of customization, such as allow users to modify the textures for leaves and/or bark or maybe add some sort of color filter to them.

For one thing, it would allow for some creative uses for trees and plants, such as discussed in the Organic Hair using iClone iTree Plants thread.

For another, we could give trees and/or plants some unusual colors like blue, purple or red to at least give a weak illusion that these are alien plants on another world.


Exactly.