After two years in development, SpeedTree 8 is nearly ready, featuring graphical and intuitive time saving features - and will make its grand debut during GDC 2017 next week.
The debut of SpeedTree 8 will happen with Amazon's CryEngine-based Lumberyard graphics engine, making its way to Lumberyard in Q2 2017 - but there will be support for other graphics engines in the near future. IDV, the team behind SpeedTree 8, has released some new screenshots to tease us before the big reveal next week.
Michael Sechrest, co-founder of Interactive Data Visualization (IDV) explains: "Amazon Lumberyard is an outstanding showcase for the new surface-scanned materials and modeling features that SpeedTree 8 brings to the table. Our new physically based rendering material workflow, wind algorithms and overall modeling enhancements all shine in the engine. Lumberyard will be the first to experience the most powerful version of SpeedTree yet".
What does SpeedTree 8 do? Let's see:
- Seamless integration with Amazon Lumberyard
- Full PBR material workflow and rendering
- All new 3D surface-scanned 8K PBR texture library
- New techniques for low-poly branch structure modeling and mesh editing
- Automatic vertex color painting for Lumberyard wind with in-modeler preview
- One-draw-call models with tiling textures, wind, and LOD
- New art director tools and more intuitive workflow
