"There are a lot of ways that SpeedTree gains awareness in the marketplace, we have found, but definitely the most significant is appearing in great games like The Witcher 3."

What can you tell us about the recent launch of SpeedTree on Unity and the Unreal Engine 4 free/subscription product?

Our monthly subscription products have been very popular and seem to have met a need in a way our earlier, more expensive products couldn’t. We can finally give SpeedTree to indies, hobbyists, students and teachers, something we’ve wanted to do for a long time.

How does it feel to win a Scientific and Technical Academy Award and an Engineering Emmy? How important do you think that achievement is?

2015 was an amazing year for us, and that recognition was a huge part of it. Particularly important is that we were chosen for those awards by our peers – other professionals in the animation and entertainment industries – who took a hard look at our underlying technology and interface, not just at the number of games and movies we’ve been featured in.

What are your thoughts on photogrammetry and its usage in Star Wars Battlefront? How could such a system integrate with SpeedTree for better looking foliage and an overall better look to games?

The version 7 SpeedTree Modeler can import photogrammetry meshes and, with some tweaking and hand-modeling, incorporate those meshes into full tree or plant models. And SpeedTree’s ability to more efficiently work with that kind of mesh is a current development focus.

Last time we spoke about the advances made from Witcher to Witcher 2 in terms of the foliage quality and how it impacted gameplay. With SpeedTree having been used in Witcher 3, could you enlighten us on some of the evolutions seen to the foliage that further distinguish it from its predecessor (aside from looking more detailed)?

CD Projekt would be the best source for insight here, but we can say we were really impressed with the quantity and quality of vegetation in the game. And they did the wind beautifully too. With games like Witcher 3 having achieved a high level of success and lauded for their use of foliage, has SpeedTree been given a larger exposure than before?

There are a lot of ways that SpeedTree gains awareness in the marketplace, we have found, but definitely the most significant is appearing in great games like The Witcher 3. It should be noted though that SpeedTree’s job is to be both ubiquitous and invisible. As in the real world, you should just take our trees for granted and not think about where they came from. So most players have never heard of SpeedTree. In fact, one of the most common interactions with experienced game players at trade shows is: “You’re SpeedTree? What’s that?” followed by “So, is anyone using you?”

"The SpeedTree SDK is a team player. That is, it is designed to work with any rendering system or platform, and to deliver consistent results on all of them."

What new features has SpeedTree incorporated in the past few months and what are your current plans for the technology?

We are well into version 7 for games, having launched it in early 2015 (and in late 2013 for movies/animation), so we haven’t introduced any major features recently. We’re of course always working on cool new things, though, so stay tuned. We might have an announcement in 2016 or ’17.

Which game do you think will be the next big thing when it comes to showing off foliage and the use of SpeedTree in video games?

We’re really looking forward to seeing the great games that will feature SpeedTree in 2016. But we’d hesitate to pick just one.

Several years ago, we talked about the potential of SpeedTree with regards to cloud computing. With the reveal of Crackdown 3 last year, do you believe there will be a use for SpeedTree when it comes to streaming large swathes of foliage over the cloud in the coming years?

Yes, the cloud should enable computationally-intensive features like tree destruction and other physics effects, which can impact both aesthetics and gameplay. We’d like to think SpeedTree offers a lot of options for customers who cloud-stream their games.

What are your thoughts on DX12 usage with SpeedTree? What kind of benefits it could possibly bring to the foliage system?

The SpeedTree SDK is a team player. That is, it is designed to work with any rendering system or platform, and to deliver consistent results on all of them. Because of this, we can’t always take advantage of certain advanced features a particular renderer allows. However, that doesn’t preclude someone from using those things if their game only targets a particular rendering system. For instance, in SpeedTree v7 we introduced subdivision surfaces.

These sub-d cages can easily be taken through hardware tessellation, if your game supports it. We’re always on the lookout for these new features, though, because many of them will eventually become standard. For a long time we couldn’t depend on hardware instancing being available, for example, but the SpeedTree SDK now uses it heavily to render extremely large forests.

"In general, every improvement to hardware over the last 15 years has meant better vegetation in three key areas: more trees and plants, more detailed trees and plants, and improved wind effects."

What are your thoughts on SpeedTree with regards to its usage in VR?

We’ve always tried to remain hardware agnostic, to just make good tree modeling/rendering software and then let our customers put them wherever they need to. So we really look forward to seeing how SpeedTree gets used in VR.

What kind of optimizations have you done to the middleware in the last few months? How are you reducing memory overhead?

The last major version we released, SpeedTree for Games version 7 in early 2015, included a number of optimizations we discovered while working with one of our customers on a major game a few years ago.  The render loop as a whole has been improved with the addition of a sorting step for draw calls. Shader constant and instance streaming have been dramatically improved. We also worked to bring OpenGL performance up to par with DirectX. Basically, we are always working on the SDK to make it faster, which eventually results in forests that are bigger and more detailed.

What are your thoughts on console hardware like the PS4 and Xbox One two years after their initial launch?

We’ve been very proud to be part of both consoles from day one, and to be in close to a dozen next-gen games at launch or soon after. More great SpeedTree games are on the way. And see the next answer for some technical comments on consoles.

"We’ve never tried to lock in any developer to exclusive SpeedTree use, and are glad to be here when they turn to us, or to admire and learn from their vegetation when they go in-house or choose another solution."

Consoles seem to be unlocking more of their potential for developers to use, like the additional cores that can now be accessed on the Xbox One and PS4. How does this affect the utility of software like SpeedTree, especially when it comes to incorporating more effects?

In general, every improvement to hardware over the last 15 years has meant better vegetation in three key areas: more trees and plants, more detailed trees and plants, and improved wind effects. Not only that, but doing these things has become easier because console hardware is getting more and more like a regular computer with each generation. Bottom line, technical strides on the consoles mean vegetation that’s increasingly more like what you find in the real world.

While there continues to be a debate on 1080p resolution vs. 60 FPS in video games, some games like Need for Speed and Star Wars Battlefront are taking a different route, focusing on alpha effects, image quality and post-processing. What are your thoughts on this and how do you see SpeedTree fitting into this alternate graphics scenario?

We’ve always tried to develop SpeedTree so it works great in any game, whether it’s a twitchy first person shooter or the latest Sims game. Artists can design trees in the SpeedTree Modeler for the particular look-and-feel they’re after, and tweaking the rendering code in the SDK is something we encourage.

Bethesda have traditionally used SpeedTree for their games but with Fallout 4 they dropped it and went for a custom solution instead. Can you provide any specifics why they dropped SpeedTree for Fallout 4?

We’ve never tried to lock in any developer to exclusive SpeedTree use, and are glad to be here when they turn to us, or to admire and learn from their vegetation when they go in-house or choose another solution. Bethesda is an outstanding developer we’ve been proud to be involved with in the past, and we’ve been very impressed with their Fallout 4 environments.

Of the many technologies that will have application in gaming for years to come, SpeedTree is perhaps one of the top-most. As a real-time foliage creation software, SpeedTree has found use in games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Batman: Arkham Knight and many other high-profile games. How will it benefit from the power of cloud computing in the coming years though?

GamingBolt spoke to SpeedTree director of business development Kevin Meredith about the same. After the reveal of Crackdown 3, is there an application for streaming large amounts of foliage through the cloud? “Yes, the cloud should enable computationally-intensive features like tree destruction and other physics effects, which can impact both aesthetics and gameplay. We’d like to think SpeedTree offers a lot of options for customers who cloud-stream their games.”

Meredith also commented on resolution vs. frame rate, especially with many games taking alternative routes to increasing visual fidelity even at a lower frame rate (like Star Wars Battlefront, which focuses more on alpha effects and post-processing). How does SpeedTree fit into such an alternative scenario?

“We’ve always tried to develop SpeedTree so it works great in any game, whether it’s a twitchy first person shooter or the latest Sims game. Artists can design trees in the SpeedTree Modeler for the particular look-and-feel they’re after, and tweaking the rendering code in the SDK is something we encourage.”

Thoughts on all this, especially with the potential that SpeedTree will unlock with cloud computing? Let us know in the comments.

Of the many advantages the PS4 and Xbox One pose to developers, creating realistic vegetation over wide-ranging landscapes is one. Look at The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and how unique its environments managed to be despite some base similarities between each other.

It wasn’t just the power of current gen consoles but also SpeedTree, a software capable of generating realistic foliage and vegetation without any trouble. GamingBolt got in touch with business development director Kevin Meredith to ask his thoughts on the current gen consoles two years after launch.

Meredith stated that, “We’ve been very proud to be part of both consoles from day one, and to be in close to a dozen next-gen games at launch or soon after. More great SpeedTree games are on the way. And see the next answer for some technical comments on consoles.”

What does the future hold as manufacturers unlock more of the console’s power for developers to use, like the additional cores on the PS4 and Xbox One? For applications like SpeedTree, Meredith says that, “In general, every improvement to hardware over the last 15 years has meant better vegetation in three key areas: more trees and plants, more detailed trees and plants, and improved wind effects. Not only that, but doing these things has become easier because console hardware is getting more and more like a regular computer with each generation. Bottom line, technical strides on the consoles mean vegetation that’s increasingly more like what you find in the real world.”

Thoughts on the same? Let us know in the comments below.

Speaking to Meredith, we got his take on the software itself along with its potential for next gen consoles, Cloud computing and much more.

Ravi Sinha: For our readers who are not aware of SpeedTree, can you please enlighten them about this technology?

Kevin Meredith: SpeedTree for Games, winner of a Front Line Award for middleware, delivers amazingly natural real-time trees and plants with seamless LOD transitions, an array of lighting, and wind effects, as well as an SDK that can be programmed to support any level of engine integration.

SpeedTree includes SpeedTree Modeler, which offers a unique hybrid of hand and procedural modeling options and has been used in countless games and a growing list of movies, including Avatar. SpeedTree was created by Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. (IDV), founded in 1999 to develop graphic and visualization tools for a wide variety of industries. For more information, visit www.speedtree.com.

Ravi Sinha: SpeedTree has created many benefits for developers in the generation of 3D foliage. Could you briefly explain to us how the process for SpeedTree works for video games?

Kevin Meredith: SpeedTree for Games delivers a suite of tools and art assets designed to cover all aspects of tree modeling and rendering, with options for integrating at any point in the game development pipeline. Software components include:

" Any improvement in console hardware can result in better real-time rendering, but every SpeedTree customer makes their own decision about how to best utilize SpeedTree in their unique game. "

Tree Model Library
Features almost 200 species that can be loaded into SpeedTree Modeler for manipulation and export. Each species model can be used to generate limitless variations.

SpeedTree Modeler
Covers all aspects of modeling, including procedural and hand drawing methods, wind, LOD, lighting, physics, and world building for large scale tree placement. Creates assets for real-time conversion in SpeedTree Compiler and rendering by SpeedTree SDK, but the user may also bypass rendering code and export meshes (supported formats include FBX, OBJ) for use directly in many modeling packages. Also exports a group of meshes at a user-defined range of LOD settings.

SpeedTree Compiler
Converts artist-friendly models into real-time tree models, creates texture atlases, and generates 360° normal-mapped billboards.

SpeedTree SDK
This set of C++ classes addresses all tasks associated with high performance tree rendering, with an emphasis on easy integration. The SDK runs on numerous platforms including the current and next gen consoles.

Rashid Sayed: Next Gen consoles have a ton of RAM and memory in them. How does this present a better solution for creating realistic foliage?

Kevin Meredith: Any improvement in console hardware can result in better real-time rendering, but every SpeedTree customer makes their own decision about how to best utilize SpeedTree in their unique game. In general, though, the kinds of vegetation effects enabled by improved hardware include more photo-real, higher-poly trees, more convincing LOD transitions, better wind and lighting and, occasionally, dynamic destruction and other physics effects.

"The toughest part of simulating wind in game environments is getting good behavior with a very small amount of CPU/GPU time. It’s always a balancing act between quality and performance."

Ravi Sinha: What does IDV do to make SpeedTree up to date with current graphical demands in the industry? What are some of the features added which differentiate the foliage we see between sequels for the same franchise, for instance.

Kevin Meredith: Our favorite example is the first Witcher game, by CD Projekt, which came out in 2007 and made outstanding use of SpeedTree version 4, with lots of dark and foreboding forests of procedural trees. But for Witcher 2, CD Projekt got to use SpeedTree v5, a major rewrite of the software that enabled hand-drawing of trees and individual branch placement and editing. As you’ll see if you play Witcher 2, they made great use of the new features, for example with branches carefully placed so that the monsters could actually climb down them convincingly to attack the hero.

Ravi Sinha: What kind of potential does SpeedTree hold along with cloud computing on next gen consoles and PC?

Kevin Meredith: Out of the box, SpeedTree doesn’t have anything that will directly take advantage of cloud computing. This isn’t to say that SpeedTree clients can’t marry the two in their integration. Streaming procedural forest population for very large worlds comes to mind.

Rashid Sayed: One interesting feature about the SpeedTree SDK that caught my eye was that it also allows for Wind Simulation. It easily is one of the toughest simulations to create, since we essentially can’t see air. What kind of challenges and hurdles do you guys face in order to accurately recreate something you can’t see?

Kevin Meredith: The toughest part of simulating wind in game environments is getting good behavior with a very small amount of CPU/GPU time. It’s always a balancing act between quality and performance. We provide low and high fidelity options and are constantly updating the algorithms to take advantage of new hardware and platforms.

"Unreal Engine 4 is an excellent engine, and we’re proud to be part of it."

Ravi Sinha: How does SpeedTree help create realistic foliage without draining on system resources?

Kevin Meredith: Because we’ve tried to make SpeedTree versatile enough to be used in any pipeline configuration and platform hardware, we like to believe that our customers have complete control over how much demand SpeedTree places on their systems. Having said that, we have over the last decade learned countless proprietary tricks for modeling and rendering complex, detailed vegetation extremely efficiently.

Rashid Sayed: SpeedTree has partnered with Epic Games in-order to integrate it into Unreal Engine 4. What kind of modifications did you guys had to make in order to achieve an optimal performance on it? And are the results startling?

Kevin Meredith: Unreal Engine 4 is an excellent engine, and we’re proud to be part of it. While we can reveal that we’re very happy with SpeedTree’s UE4 integration, we unfortunately can’t break confidentiality on integration details.

Rashid Sayed: Is the integration of SpeedTree any different in video games compared to movies? Can you please explain the difference in integration between the two entertainments formats?

Kevin Meredith: Games and Movies share many of the same production tools, so there is a good deal of overlap. That being said, game integrations revolve around being fast. It has to load fast, render fast, detect collisions fast, simulate wind fast, etc. These are the primary reasons why our games package has the Compiler and SDK options and our movie packages do not. Game level models reflect this as well by generally having much lower triangle counts and smooth LOD transitions.

"Games and Movies share many of the same production tools, so there is a good deal of overlap. That being said, game integrations revolve around being fast. It has to load fast, render fast, detect collisions fast, simulate wind fast, etc. "

Visual effects and animation integrations are all about pipeline flexibility. Vegetation models often get passed from tool to tool to handle things like texture painting, detail sculpting, and render setup. Then they are rendered by a wide variety of applications, each with their own particular methods for handling materials and animation. Movie level models typically contain millions of triangles reflecting the fact that model fidelity is more important than rendering efficiency in these situations.

Rashid Sayed: What else can we look forward to in the world of SpeedTree? Do you see a saturation point for this technology anytime soon?

Kevin Meredith: We continue to evolve SpeedTree on the basis of what our customers are asking for, what the latest hardware will support, and what we discover on our own as better ways to model and render vegetation. In terms of saturation, there are still a lot of people out there who have never heard of SpeedTree, or don’t know how it works, so we continue to have our work cut out for us. But articles like this help, thank you!

We recently got a chance to speak to Kevin Meredith who is the Director of Business Development, Interactive Data Visualization (IDV), the folks behind SpeedTree.

SpeedTree specializes in creating vegetation in video games and movies, with their technology being used in upcoming games like Destiny (pictured above). One of the features that the SpeedTree SDK supports is wind simulation. We asked Meredith the challenges behind creating such a complicated simulation to which he replied:

“The toughest part of simulating wind in game environments is getting good behavior with a very small amount of CPU/GPU time. It’s always a balancing act between quality and performance. We provide low and high fidelity options and are constantly updating the algorithms to take advantage of new hardware and platforms.”

Given the fact that SpeedTree was also used in big blockbuster movies, we asked Meredith the differences between creating vegetation for movies and games.

“Games and Movies share many of the same production tools, so there is a good deal of overlap. That being said, game integrations revolve around being fast. It has to load fast, render fast, detect collisions fast, simulate wind fast, etc. These are the primary reasons why our games package has the Compiler and SDK options and our movie packages do not. Game level models reflect this as well by generally having much lower triangle counts and smooth LOD transitions.”

“Visual effects and animation integrations are all about pipeline flexibility. Vegetation models often get passed from tool to tool to handle things like texture painting, detail sculpting, and render setup. Then they are rendered by a wide variety of applications, each with their own particular methods for handling materials and animation. Movie level models typically contain millions of triangles reflecting the fact that model fidelity is more important than rendering efficiency in these situations,” he explained.

Stay tuned for our full interview with IDV on SpeedTree and let us know your thoughts on the potential that SpeedTree holds in video games.

We talked to Director of Business Development Kevin Meredith about next gen consoles, starting with how the amount of RAM would help in generating realistic foliage.

“Any improvement in console hardware can result in better real-time rendering, but every SpeedTree customer makes their own decision about how to best utilize SpeedTree in their unique game. In general, though, the kinds of vegetation effects enabled by improved hardware include more photo-real, higher-poly trees, more convincing LOD transitions, better wind and lighting and, occasionally, dynamic destruction and other physics effects.”

Meredith also told us about the potential of Cloud computing within next gen consoles and PC for SpeedTree. “Out of the box, SpeedTree doesn’t have anything that will directly take advantage of cloud computing. This isn’t to say that SpeedTree clients can’t marry the two in their integration. Streaming procedural forest population for very large worlds comes to mind.”

Of course, there’s a lot of work to be done with keeping SpeedTree up to date with current graphical demands, and we quizzed Meredith on the features that need adding. What does IDV implement to differentiate between foliage seen in sequels for the same franchise, for example?

“Our favorite example is the first Witcher game, by CD Projekt, which came out in 2007 and made outstanding use of SpeedTree version 4, with lots of dark and foreboding forests of procedural trees. But for Witcher 2, CD Projekt got to use SpeedTree v5, a major rewrite of the software that enabled hand-drawing of trees and individual branch placement and editing. As you’ll see if you play Witcher 2, they made great use of the new features, for example with branches carefully placed so that the monsters could actually climb down them convincingly to attack the hero.”

Of course, the flora and fauna further evolved with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which will be releasing next year for PS4 and Xbox One along with PC. Stay tuned for our full interview with IDV on SpeedTree and let us know your thoughts on the potential that next gen consoles hold.