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.
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…
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
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.
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…
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
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…