BlitzTree3D released

<img src="http://www.aliencodec.com/Images/bt3_si.jpg">

BlitzTree3D Features:

** Tested engine code for 3d-tree operations.
** Based off proven techniques used in SpeedTreeRT
** You get all the source code for the tree engine, easily add it to your projects.
** Fast calculations to control 1000's of trees per render.
** Included is 60 pre-made engine trees.
** Included is a convertor utility that allows you to make trees in any modeler and import them in.
** Simple demo code to show you the required steps for putting trees in your game/application.
** Support via Aliencodec's forums.
** Use in any commerical / private project (full version, non-open source)

Engine Specific Features:

** Single-surface operations, all the chunks (leaf) are sorted and take advatnage of quad-mesh design..
** High detail trees using photorealistic skins and design.
** Tree shading controls.
** Tree tinting controls.
** Tree ambience controls.
** Tree animation controls.
** Tree seasonal controls.
** 9 season presets included, change seasons with a simple command - Season=winter, or define your own!
** 3 levels of LOD
** Gridding / portaling engine code.
** The developer has full control over LOD, degradtion, animation and updating functions ..
** Over 6 years of 3d-tree mesh experience! we got it looking like you want it!
** Many many more features not mentioned, download the demo to see all the features!

Check out the website for more info, pics and a demo download. Aliencodec

Looks great, going to download the demo now...

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Yah, the grass system is not single surfaced (yet) so it's pretty slow hence me putting it in as an option.. Collision on the tree trunks is simple... In the LoadFunc() just set Entity <trunk>,collision_val

I didnt add collision to the demo because i wanted the viewer to be able to inspect the trees without bumping into stuff.

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Those aren't sprites.. They are 2-poly quads that make up the single surface system.

Damn nice looking trees, going to check out the demo.

awsome sabata. I remember a geforece card demo that made a forest. theres was a bit beefier but your demo reminds me of that. Will purchase if I start a project that requires realistc trees.

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Cool stuff. But if I look straight up, all the leave quads dissappear!

Pretty impressive demo! I don't have a need for it at the moment, but if I need loads of trees in the future, I'll definitely check this baby out. All in all a very nice addition to the growing library of professional-quality Blitz devtools.

Very nice. I don't like the way the leaves are animated, but apart from that it's cool!

The whispering voice is creeping me out.

If I remember correctly, the motion of the leaves where based on a spline in speedtree. The result was a bit more natural and smooth than here.
However, given enough trees, the motion blends into the background and the whole becomes very impressive.

And indeed, the whispering voice is unnerving...brrr

I think its hard to not be impressed with this, and the work you've put into it and the demo is great.

I did have a few issues tho:

1) Can you turn off the constant re-alignment in favour of randomly rotated leaf chunks?

2) Some of the trunks appear to go from nice looking (far away) to ugly and different mesh (mid-distance) to un-mipmapped (near). I presume thats an issue with the models themselves rather than the system. Although I wonder why you turn off mipmapping?

3) I actually prefer the leaves as they appear in the distance (alpha'd I think). Can the user control this?

4) As well as Wiebos issue of the leaves dissapearing when you look straight up. Leaves that are nearby when it starts don't appear until you get further away from them.

Neat system tho.

is that voice saying "buy me" backwards ?

Thanks for the comments guys!

Im ever-continuing to improve the system and some of things mentioned above have already been rectified.


Wiebo:
Hmmm, I've yet to experience this. How odd.. Does it happen on all the demo lvls or just a certain tree? I'll look into this!

Masterbeaker:
1) Yes, its all preference.
2) Miping at close distance in the demo is a mistake, i was testing some effects in the demo and forgot to remove the flag. Actually, it would speed things up quite abit if that mipping was never removed.
3) alpha or masked is a prefence as well.
4) I havent seen that yet! but will investigate. Could it be a framerate problem?

Knotz:
ST3d has access to memory allocations will allow for far greater perfromence when dealing with spline anims.
The nature of BlitzTree3d is speed first, then effect second. But speedtree won't work in Blitz3d. Good find though as you are 100% correct.

RiRaf:
I'll never tell! :)

That's really very good !

Sabata,

It happens with all trees. I ran the demo on my ibm a31 laptop, which has a ati rage mobility 3d card...

Sabata,

Very nice demo.

IPete2.

I found the same problem as masterbeaker in regards to the leaves not appearing on the trees until the base of the trunk was on the screen.

Specs: PIII 800, Geforce2 64MB

Other than that issue the demo is very impressive. Good work.

Dave, I found that bug.. Thanks!

General,
I had an email request asking me to show a map with long clip range and tons of trees... so im working on an additional demo using mark's Xfighter map (which is the biggest ive seen in blitz yet!)... so far i got over 30,000 trees calculating smoothly.. My goal is 50k and im making a few tweaks to the engine to better handle LARGE amounts of 'awaiting' trees in the tree_pool.