Hi, I work at SpeedTree...

Greetings from SpeedTree!

I just wanted to take a moment to introduce myself as the new community manager for IDV, Inc. I’ll be handling the twitter feed, making blog posts, and generally making tree related puns in a public setting for better or worse.

The integration of SpeedTree into Unity 5 has already led to a lot of great work coming out of the beta community, and we’re excited to see what else you guys are going to be able to do. Over the next few months we’re going to be highlighting some work from smaller developers and artists because, well, we love what you do and want to see more of it. If you’ve got some SpeedTree work that you want to show off, post it here or over in our showcase which is sorely in need of some fresh content and we might be contacting you to feature your work in some upcoming blog posts or featuring your work on our Facebook page.

-Danny Oakes

 

Hi Danny, welcome!

Looking forward to tree related puns, that's for sure. Just make sure to leave some forest of us. Ba dum tss...

just shoot me now please.

 

Wood yew share some examples?
Tried to think of some good ones but I'm stumped.

 

Is "Oakes" your real name?

 

Danny, I appreciate your SpeedTree team already. I was really wanting a specific type of plant and you guys made it within like 2 weeks for Unity. I'm loving the plant. And the trees, as always, are excellent.

Good ones I lol'd.

 

I also must know!

 

Yep, I've had it my whole life even. I mean, how can I NOT work for SpeedTree? Fun fact, in high school I worked briefly for a carpenter named Marcus Birch. So based on my experiences I can conclusively say that people with tree last names have a high likelihood of working in a foliage related field

 

Thanks! We're really excited to be a closer part of the Unity community, if you guys are wanting anything more specific let us know, I can't make any promises but any ideas are helpful.

Nice ones!
I keep a list of puns as a part of my daily root-tine here at SpeedTree, it probably stems from the fact that I'm an Oakes, and therefore acorn-y person in general.

 

Pun of the year for you.

Claim your prize at ---> puncomprize.com

Simply enter your credit card details and ill send you the $$$$

 

I smoked pot all the time with Malcolm Roach in the army..Well..I kind of branched off from the main topic to log that and hippoCoder maple the post when he leafs through the replies. I shall lumber along now and go cut more wood for the wood burning stove..and that one is no joke. I am covered in sawdust as I write this.

 

I deleted some posts; a UE4 debate is absolutely not appropriate here. Speedtree only. (And tree-related puns, I guess, though I'm wondering if some bans might be in order. )

--Eric

 

Just to clarify, once you've created your assets in the SpeedTree Modeler and imported them into Unity 5, you don't have to continue the subscription to use those assets. A lot of our users only use SpeedTree one or two months at a time throughout their projects in Unity 5. It just depends on your needs.

I'm really lichen the puns guys, I added some of them to my list

 

Its great to see you branch out to an engine like Unity!

 

I was excited when I saw the wheat plant for Speedtree in the asset store! Almost bought and I don't even have Unity 5 yet! I hope you will continue with that thread and add more crops, vegetables and un-tree items to the Speedtree collection!

Great to have you here.

Love the puns!!

 

Thanks! It's great to be here! We're constantly working on stuff to add to the asset store, there's been a large response to the wheat so I'm sure we'll see more non-tree items coming out!

 

Fabulous, Danny! Thanks again.

 

Hi
reposting in here in hopes of a solution. My main problem atm is Billboards not shadow casting. The company i work for does visulisation and we are often a few 100 meters above ground and this is where we run into problems, I'm also having trouble with Horizontal Billboards not working.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

 

Hi Danny,

you remember we already discussed that, any news on missing horizontal billboards?

Thanks,
Carsten

 

Hope you don't leave too soon? Though, what keeps coming to mind is the tree scene from Meaning of Life!!!
Gigi

 

Hah! I used to go to a dental college for my cleanings / checkups. There were several practicing dentists that volunteered there. I kid you not, there was both a Dr. Toothaker and a Dr. Payne.

 

Do you know when SpeedTree gets properly integrated into Unity5 ? There are still a lot of issues, e.g.

- Tons of colliders added in the default prefabs. E.g. the batches of mushrooms comes with 19 colliders...
- SmoothLOD was breaking batching in Unity5.0.f4, havent seen any patches that it has been fixed.
- SmoothLOD creates an alpha-checker board texture when blending textures which makes trees look awful when not close.
- SpeedTree Billboards from Top don't work.

In general SpeedTree is great as you can see on Unreal4, but on Unity5 it's a poor implementation that takes out all the buy incentives for me.

 

What he said....

The LOD transitions are terrible. I have done everything suggested and I still get that either dithering or an awkward "pop" when transitioning, depending on the settings. These things are expensive and I don't want to throw away all these assets. The shaders are not really all that great either, although we are told that is up to Unity, so waiting patiently.

Fortunately, we are not close to release but I wouldn't feel comfortable at the moment releasing with Speedtree.

I posted this same thing on the Speedtree forums and got the same answer again..adjust the crossfade. The crossfade doesn't work well no matter the setting.

 

I'd love to get some insight from the Unity side of this issue. Currently I feel SpeedTree integration in Unity is more of a marketing bullet point rather than a deep feature... would be good to at least get some kind of roadmap for SpeedTree improvements from Unity.

 

I think I've read in other threads that Unity expects SpeedTree to improve as new releases of Unity emerge. But it seems to me that it's proper - and potentially helpful - to note the apparent deficiencies until they are fixed.

 

Well, the guy on the Speedtree forum told me he was surprised I didn't like the cross-fade since it was so much better than the "pop". The checkerboard pixelated pattern is there for much longer than the pop. If you take a picture or look back with your character controller at any time during the cross-fade transition, you see the pixelated trees. It looks like a pixel tree in the middle of your lovely terrain setting. It sticks around longer than a pop and it looks as we are sloppy designers. I hate that.

The pop is annoying as well, but I turned off all the cross-fading because it at least doesn't show up in pictures.

So please, if you don't like the way the LOD's transition go to the Speedtree forums and say something. They don't even seem to know we are not happy.

I am glad it will be improved, but since "smooth LOD's" were advertised by Speedtree, I think it is something they need to fix. I saw UE folks complain about it too so it is not Unity this time.

 

I'm not too sure why we can't get a clear answer regarding the top down billboards - it's a fairly significant thing to be so tight lipped about. I won't be considering SpeedTree at all until this is rectified, but as soon as its fixed I'll likely jump all over it (and the Unity modeler).

 

Question..about the dithering, wouldn't a simple blur help cancel the pixelation we see at a distance? I would think that would be a given with something like this but it just occurred to me that that might be what is missing.

Oh, and don't say we need IE's because I already have those, along with fog.

 

i like the new speed trees in unity 5, they slow down the FRPS but they are like real life and we have shadows now that are cool as well.

 

I could be missing something here, but I'd much prefer that Unity had a generic impostering system that could be applied to any renderer than have to deal with a variety of systems provided by 3rd parties.

 

I love Speedtrees! That is why I want to see them fixed.

Of course, but that all depends on the deal Speedtree made with Unity. Seems that if they are advertising "smooth LODs" then they should have them.

 

I was partially mistaken with what I wrote, for some reason I thought you were only referring to the final stage of the LOD where it becomes a billboard. Yes, the other intermediate stages should also transition smoothly, and that's not something I expect Unity could do generically for us.

 

Well don't get me wrong, we are currently evaluating Unreal4 because many of our partner studios switched to U4 already so there is quite some difference in quality between U5 and UE4.7 - we are close to give up on Unity as well. So, SpeedTree itself is great.

 

If you use UE. But..most of us do not and this is a Unity forum. So SpeedTree is not so great for us yet. Not all of have games that work well in UE...or for other reasons choose Unity. If Speedtree is in Unity, it should fix the issues it has with Unity. While some of might be Unity's fault, I think it is more likely mutual.

And there are folks on Speedtree's forums using UE who are having the same issues so not everyone is happy.

Speedtree is an amazing product, but it is those little things that don't show up in the advertising that make it less amazing that it seems at first.

 

Hello,

Just to clarify what smooth LOD means... SpeedTree has lots of different techniques to smooth the transition between geometry LODs. Branches that are going away shrink down to their spine before disappearing. Leaves shrink away, while other leaves grow larger to maintain the tree's silhouette from a distance. Radial and length segments can be reduced, as well as entirely different meshes used for leaves and fronds, if you want. But when doing that, we maintain the normals, texcoords, and AO between LODs to minimize any noticeable pops. All of this works in Unity right now.

The crossfading/dithering being discussed here is only used in the transition to the billboard. The billboard is an entirely different animal from the 3D tree. It's constructed from discrete pictures of the tree, so the transition to that needs something a little different to prevent popping. This is where crossfading is used. If you don't like it, though, just disable it.

@mickyg Sorry if it seems we've been tight-lipped about top-down / horizontal billboards. The answer is they will be available in a future version.

 

Thanks for the clarification.

 

Could someone at SpeedTree give us a human-speak version of what your asset EULA means. This sentence in particular makes my brain hurt:

Are we allowed to use SpeedTree in games with Unity5 free without a SpeedTree subscription? What's the deal with having to "exclusively" use a Unity subscription? Does this mean I can't also use Photoshop to change a texture? Could someone just explain the intent behind the whole wall of "Can't make a game unless" text in plain English?

 

Could you please advise when top down billboards will be available?

Also can the Smooth LOD be improved? Perhaps by at least having an option to blur the dithering or something? I am developing for VR and along with the Screen Door Effect it is going to massively stand out in any game.

 

I have a few questions about the packages on the asset store....
If I get Desktop Trees package, does it come with the mobile LOD and vice versa?

e.g. If my game is targeting both mobile and desktop, do I need to but 2 packages?

Also - are the models usable in UE?

The cool thing about FBX is that it works everywhere - same with Speedtree tree?

Thanks for answering

 

The Desktop Trees package only includes the Desktop models and mobile with mobile models etc. If you needed to tune the LODs for a specific project you can use the Modeler to make any adjustments you need. So unless you're building two separate versions of the game finding one model and tuning it to where you need it might be best. Again, this all depends on what you're building. Our mobile trees might be all you need. If you're not sure which one you need you could use our sample trees to give you an idea.

Our unity models only work within unity and our UE4 models with UE4. They are different file formats.

Hope this helps!

 

which in each case are created exclusively with the use of the Unity or UE4 Subscription

Human Speak: Unity or UE4 subscription is related to the subscription UE4 or Unity engine, not our modeler. Free versions of both engines fit within this category.

 

Ok, that makes sense, though Unity free is not really a "subscription". But what about the word "exclusively"? I'm guessing this means you're not allowed to use them with a different engine, so you'd have to re-purchase trees if you switched from UE4 to Unity or vice versa, and couldn't use them at all in a different engine? But are you allowed to use other software and libraries in conjunction with the engine you choose? I'd certainly hope so, but saying you can only use the trees if your game "exclusively" uses a Unity subscription seems odd.

 

Speedtree is pretty impressive. Been moving to speedtrees slowly but surely since switching to Unity5. Results are pretty solid.

Can we submit stuff to you directly for possible note on blog/etc?

 

Sure! Just shoot me a message, I'd love to see it!

 

It simply means that Unity trees are for Unity, and UE4 trees are for UE4, and can't be used in other engines. You can absolutely use other software and libraries side by side with SpeedTree.

 

Hi there, any chance of answering my questions above regarding an ETA on Top Down Billboards and improvements to Simple LOD? Thanks in advance!

 

We don't currently have an eta for top-down billboards and as far as the LOD goes, I believe what you are referring to is the crossfade between the 3d model and billboard, this is not Smooth LOD handles the transitions between 3d models and only partially that final transition to billboard. I know that it is something the Unity team is aware of and is being looked into.

 

I getting an error running my game on iPhone 5. It says:
Creation of internal variant of shader 'Nature/SpeedTree' failed

 

It seems like Shader.WarmupAllShaders(); breaks something.

 

Is it something on my end or texture tiling doesn't work on speedtree shaders ? (Unity 5.1.0f3)

 

Shininess and Specular Color don't work either.