Looks good, but so far it seems to be mostly aimed towards high end game engines (LumbardYard specifically). I expect a film quality version will be along soon after.
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/first-screenshots-for-speedtree-8-in-amazons-lumberyard-engine-to-be-demoed-at-this-years-gdc/
Interesting. Lumberyard is the result of Amazon's licensing deal with the "Cryengine" folks. Cryengine has pretty much lost out to Unreal and Unity in the game development market place, but perhaps with the millions of dollars Jeff Bezos can toss at any enterprise it will succeed. Speedtree already owns the Unreal and Unity foliage creation scene, with full integration and tons of tutorials and support. My guess is that Amazon paid handsomely for IDV (Speedtree's developer) for the preview of Speedtree 8 at the GDC. Overall the quality of the Lumberyard output seemed not as good as the Megascan samples rendered in Unreal (imo). From what I've read the Game development community is welcoming another competitor in this niche, but is of the opinion that Lumberyard has some serious ground to make up in may aspects.
Speedtree 8 looks to be a significant upgrade and I'm looking forward to it. IDV has stated that Speedtree 8 will have a library of scanned textures and PBR support. My bet is that means some kind of partnership with Quixel Megascans. The addition of PBR into the workflow will be much appreciated by this Speedtree user. Using Megascan PBR content in Speedtree up till now has been problematic (at least for me :-[).
It would be great if Planetside can implement some of the PBR pipeline into TG so we could use some of these assets to their full extent, as well as using TG's terrain and atmospheric output in these game engines. Probably wishful thinking...
Thanks for the link!
Honestly, IMO it wouldn't surprise me if IDV drops developement of the FX portion of the software. Like cyphyr said............it seems aimed at game engines more than anything else. They already have free content monthly for their subscription customers (game)..........that never happens for the FX customers. I guess it will be wait and see.......... :-\
SpeedTree appears to be well used between both the Games and Film industries. SpeedTree is used quite extensively in Film.
Its incredibly expensive for use with 3D apps and pretty expensive on a monthly subscription for Unity or Unreal Engine.
PBR discussion split to new topic: http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,22913.0.html
- Oshyan