Home› Technical Talk

Should I learn to make trees, or is Speedtree phasing out the need for it?

shearer157
shearer157
polycounter lvl 4
Offline / Send Message
shearer157 polycounter lvl 4
Hi,
As an undergrad I'm still trying to find out a lot of things about industry, and one of my biggest technical questions is about trees. I've seen gta/ the witcher 3 use Speedtree; is it the gaming standard for trees? Has it phased out the need for artists to create them in titles?
Should I bother learning to make them or just learn how to use Speedtree?
Cheers in advance
· Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Replies

  • Eric Chadwick
    Options
    Offline / Send Message
    Eric Chadwick admin
    Learn how. Speedtree requires a license fee, so is not used in all games, not even the majority I would imagine. Also the skills you will learn will carry over to many other game art tasks.

    I put some resources here on our wiki
    http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Foliage
    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • wirrexx
    Options
    Offline / Send Message
    wirrexx quad damage
    Learning is always better. It just gives you a better understanding! =)
    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • shearer157
    Options
    Offline / Send Message
    shearer157 polycounter lvl 4
    TIL polycount has a wiki. Awesome. Thank you, I'll give them a shot. They are so difficult to make them well! Damn you Witcher 3 and your beautiful waving branches.
    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • mattyinthesun
    Options
    Offline / Send Message
    mattyinthesun polycounter lvl 4
    Yes, you should. Even with SpeedTree there is a lot of cleanup and some remodelling to do - I create trees using ZBrush, Maya and SpeedTree - all are good for different things. Most important thing really is to deeply analyse the structure and design of trees
    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • sprunghunt
    Options
    Offline / Send Message
    sprunghunt polycounter
    Speedtree isn't actually that fast to render as the geometry isn't that efficient. A hand modeled tree will render as fast as a speedtree as long as it has LODs.
    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • loggie24
    Options
    Offline / Send Message
    loggie24 polycounter lvl 3
    For movies and such were optimization isn't a big deal SpeedTree would definitely be a good choice, for games on the other hand i would go with the hand modeling process simply because you have a bit more freedom. You will most likely need to re touch what comes out of SpeedTree anyways, and as people have already stated since trees are in general one of the harder things to make properly, once you know how to other things will become easier (at least in my experience).
    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • Joost
    Options
    Offline / Send Message
    Joost polycount sponsor
    Speedtree is good if you have a lot of money and you want quick usable results. But nothing can beat a good artist imo. Not yet anyway ;)

    There's several examples on Polycount of people creating amazing foliage which looks much better than anything made with Speedtree, in my opinion.
    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • shearer157
    Options
    Offline / Send Message
    shearer157 polycounter lvl 4
    Thanks guys this has been very useful, I appreciate everything. I'm gonna learn to make my own trees. Wish me luck!
    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • jonas_molgaard
    Options
    Offline / Send Message
    jonas_molgaard vertex
    Just came accross this thread because i was wondering the same thing. I looked at SpeedTree, and was immediately bummed out by the pricing. So i was wondering too if people still would be using this for games or go for handcrafting them. So i guess i'll also eventually have to learn how to model them myself. In case there are other good alternatives for making good looking trees for games, make sure to let us know.
    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
Sign In or Register to comment.