#flipcode

Image by <a href=mailto:"eric650@gmail.com">Eric aka Eric</a><br/>Posted 2006-04-13<br/><br/><img src="galleria/fullsize/tree_editor_new.jpg"/><h1>Description</h1><br/>After being reminded of how great SpeedTree is upon playing Oblivion, I set out to create a much simpler yet functionally useful version for my own purposes. While making tree trunks is fairly easy in a modeling program, I found that placing the leaves to give it an organic, natural look to be beyond my programmer art skills. So I created a simple editor to load a tree trunk with branches, and then apply leaf billboards that rotate to always face the camera as SpeedTree does. While my leaves do not animate in the wind, nor is there anything "speed" about it, I managed to make trees that look substantially better than my previous modeling attempts. There are two levels of leaves - level 2 leaves are larger and I place fewer of them, just to fill in the tree branches. Only level 2 leaves are rendered after a certain distance from the camera as a simple form of LOD. When the tree is close, it renders level 1 and level 2 leaves to get the full effect. In the picture I have two screens of my editor - the first is when I am making the level 2 leaves and this is what would be rendered at a distance. The second picture shows level 1 and level 2 leaves for full tree foliage. The editor works by adding a leaf, then simply clicking on the branch where you want it to be placed. There are buttons to fine-tune its location if necessary. Also I can hide/show any leaves I want to get unnecessary ones out of my way while I am creating the tree. I can save/load it to my tree class for easy use in any projects. And yes, it is rendered with TrueVision3D of course :)

Finally! A new IOTD =) It looks nice but what about allowing multiple levels of branching / procedural ability?

Its something I have been thinking of doing. Right now I don\'t have much free time, I\'m rather busy finishing up this semester. Perhaps this summer I will add many new features like procedural trunk/branch generation and possible rendering optimizations. Or I may just lose interest like I always do :)

Nice work!

Yeah this software looks like a perfect base on which to add procedural tree gen, and fast-for-games low poly tree gen at that.

right now I have plans on further optimizing/enhancing the current version and then making a 2.0 version that is rendered completely differently based on vertex shaders to be much more optimized. Hopefully I will sustain interest long enough to fulfill my plans.