speedtree is reasonable, if you create your own in it probably 1 tree in 25 is any good (realistic shape wise) the bark textures and their normal maps are pretty good... foliage is hit and miss, you'll end up making your own (as speedtree are not well matched so they can look odd and mismatched ie not from the same…
Speedtree is pretty much your only option if you have to make hundreds of the bastards and you need to lod them. It has a lot of benefits if you're able to integrate speedtree models into your engine (wind rigs, leaf lod scaling, billboard baking etc.) It's a shame the supplied textures and shading setup are absolute shit…
Depends on the developer. Speedtree is one of the best solutions, but sometimes it requires a license fee. Making good foliage is a good skill to have as an enviro artist. We have some tips on the wiki http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Foliage
I can't agree with this more, speedtree is awesome but it requires you to go in and play with near every slider to really get a handle on how it works. Their documentation is barebones and their tutorials, while getting better, are the same. The way Speedtree handles materials in the modeler is wretched in my opinion and…
It'll depend on the studio size and resources. Here I've had to get stuck in to speedtree for the new project. It's a pretty easy tool to dive in to and learn although I would have killed for some Substance Painter level of tutes when I was starting out.
Looking to improve my portfolio as an Environment Artist but I haven't tried nature scenes. Is it considered lazy or a no-no for you to just grab trees, rocks, etc from SpeedTree or other library's for your scene? Or is that something that would be expected to make from scratch. Thanks!
SpeedTree only makes realistic trees suitable for first person games. You might have to make trees for isometric games. You might have to make trees for a stylised game. I would expect an environment artist to be able to make trees from scratch. Learning the principles is important.