Awesome real-time tree animation

Feedback on past, current, and future development.
User avatar
Br0ken
Posts: 243
Joined: 02 Apr 2012, 05:54
Location: Siberia

Awesome real-time tree animation

Post by Br0ken »

http://youtu.be/JjZc9ayGlaM
http://youtu.be/28ZOMiPdY30
The best tree animation I've ever seen. :shock:
I wonder is it possible to implement a similar technique in OpenMW?
User avatar
dEnigma
Posts: 248
Joined: 24 Nov 2013, 21:24
Location: Hla Oad

Re: Awesome real-time tree animation

Post by dEnigma »

Wow, that's nice, and from 2008/9, why don' we have trees like this in games already? ;)
User avatar
psi29a
Posts: 5356
Joined: 29 Sep 2011, 10:13
Location: Belgium
Gitlab profile: https://gitlab.com/psi29a/
Contact:

Re: Awesome real-time tree animation

Post by psi29a »

I've seen trees like that recently.... but only in demos produced by Unigine engine. The waving trees and leaves in the wind.
User avatar
Br0ken
Posts: 243
Joined: 02 Apr 2012, 05:54
Location: Siberia

Re: Awesome real-time tree animation

Post by Br0ken »

Unigine method is not so great looking and uses a simple billboard foliage (like in Oblivion).
BlueFootedBooby
Posts: 36
Joined: 15 Sep 2013, 16:00
Location: ...here?

Re: Awesome real-time tree animation

Post by BlueFootedBooby »

Br0ken wrote:Unigine method is not so great looking and uses a simple billboard foliage (like in Oblivion).
Practically all games do trees this way nowadays. In fact, most game engines actually use the exact same library Oblivion uses, SpeedTrees. This middleware provides a huge array of tools for defining types of tree, and generating unique specimens of a given species. It also automatically produces the different level-of-detail variations, including foliage of varying levels of clumpiness, and extreme-distance versions that are entirely a single billboard. On top of this it can automatically generate the sway animations based on parameters like wind speed and the stiffness of an individual species. Using SpeedTrees saves devs a tremendous amount of tedious work, and the general approach is basically the only way to get a reasonable number of trees with remotely plausible foliage, especially in games with longer visibility differences.

Which leads us to the obvious question: if this method is "not so good," can you give me an example of a game that you think does trees well? Nothing in Unreal Engine or Cryengine, nor Battlefield 4 or Skyrim, since those all use SpeedTrees.
dEnigma wrote:Wow, that's nice, and from 2008/9, why don' we have trees like this in games already? ;)
psi29a wrote:I've seen trees like that recently.... but only in demos produced by Unigine engine. The waving trees and leaves in the wind.
I believe the ;) denoted sarcasm. He was pointing out that this technology is indeed commonplace.
User avatar
dEnigma
Posts: 248
Joined: 24 Nov 2013, 21:24
Location: Hla Oad

Re: Awesome real-time tree animation

Post by dEnigma »

BlueFootedBooby wrote:
dEnigma wrote:Wow, that's nice, and from 2008/9, why don' we have trees like this in games already? ;)
psi29a wrote:I've seen trees like that recently.... but only in demos produced by Unigine engine. The waving trees and leaves in the wind.
I believe the ;) denoted sarcasm. He was pointing out that this technology is indeed commonplace.
Ha, no, that wasn't sarcasm, I haven't seen trees that look this great in any game. :)
Chris
Posts: 1625
Joined: 04 Sep 2011, 08:33

Re: Awesome real-time tree animation

Post by Chris »

BlueFootedBooby wrote:Which leads us to the obvious question: if this method is "not so good," can you give me an example of a game that you think does trees well? Nothing in Unreal Engine or Cryengine, nor Battlefield 4 or Skyrim, since those all use SpeedTrees.
I think he means the way the tree branches end in a billboard leaves texture even at high detail. That's something Oblivion did, but those other games you listed don't.
BlueFootedBooby
Posts: 36
Joined: 15 Sep 2013, 16:00
Location: ...here?

Re: Awesome real-time tree animation

Post by BlueFootedBooby »

Chris wrote:
BlueFootedBooby wrote:Which leads us to the obvious question: if this method is "not so good," can you give me an example of a game that you think does trees well? Nothing in Unreal Engine or Cryengine, nor Battlefield 4 or Skyrim, since those all use SpeedTrees.
I think he means the way the tree branches end in a billboard leaves texture even at high detail. That's something Oblivion did, but those other games you listed don't.
Ok, yeah, that makes more sense. Though I'd forgotten Skyrim didn't use them for the near stuff. The sprites never bothered me, so I stopped noticing pretty quickly.
anahuj
Posts: 31
Joined: 29 Dec 2013, 03:26

Re: Awesome real-time tree animation

Post by anahuj »

Check for an implementation:

https://code.google.com/p/natu-renderer/

I have asked google code to add "download as zip/tar" as in other sites - still no - pain to use svn client and pack. Anyone could copy to github for archival? does github has such archival copy service? google code still has no proper project browsing - cannot find interesting projects which would be useful - everyone knows Ogre but do you know freeelectron real-time tree animation code?!
Post Reply