As I think is mentioned in the main Speedtree thread on the forum, Speedtree 8 will be coming for Unity, though at this time there is no schedule or timetable.
From what I’ve gathered as a Speedtree user and participating on the forums (here and on the Speedtree site), and just knowing about the company in the world of vfx and gaming, their two biggest customer segments are the really big game studios (Ubisoft, etc) and the film industry (Avatar, Star Wars, etc). Most of their r&d is done for those customers and their projects (so a big budget feature film or major game title), and then from there it trickles down to the various apps and game engines.
With Speedtree 8, it appears that the initial development was done for Ubisoft’s Far Cry 5, which is built on the CryEngine game engine. That paved the road for Lumberyard, since Amazon’s platform is also built on the same engine. A number of big feature films have also been relying heavily on Speedtree,
I think Kong: Skull Island was a big project for them and based on their history I would be surprised if they weren’t very involved in The Last Jedi (which just finished post-production last week) and of course the next Avatar film (which has been in pre-production forever and goes into production in the next couple weeks). I believe the company started teasing SpeedTree 8 Cinema at Siggraph over the summer, which leads me to believe that one is currently in development and may be next.
While it is entirely possible that they could surprise us all and drop a Speedtree 8 for Unity engine at Unite Austin, my guess is that won’t be the case, and at best maybe we can hope for a teaser or technology demo and we won’t see Speedtree 8 until 2018. That’s just my guess though, I could totally be wrong.
I still haven’t gotten a response from the company on is what will happen with our purchased assets. When Speedtree 8 gets here, will it mean we have to buy all new assets, or will there be some kind of asset program, or will users get upgraded assets for free? The prices for ST8 assets on the Speedtree store is noticeably higher than ST7 assets, but part of that might be the different model that they’re using on Lumberyard (there’s no monthly charge for the modeler app, it appears Amazon helps underwrite some of that cost). As a user and subscriber who’s got a fair amount of purchased/earned content directly from the manufacturer, I hope they’ll reward that loyalty by simply updating the content to ST8/PBR at no charge.
Taking a quick scan through the Unite Austin info, I don’t see any Speedtree/IDV (parent company) staffers or sessions posted. Barring any unannounced surprise guest spots, I’ll guess we’ll get some kind of announcement at GDC 2018 in the spring.