SpeedTree

Unity Engine
1

Hello, i’ve searched the forums and found a few old posts as well as what looks like an old inactive project regarding trees etc, but nothing of real substance from the unity team about inclusion of speedtree into unity.

i currectly have a lic for speedtree and would like to be able to use it. big caveat: i’m about to lay out $1500 for the pro version and would need a definitive answer, not only on whether it can be done, but some pointers as to how etc… i’m assuming thru the plugin system of course, any sample or tutorial out there? some kind soul willing to share their implementation or steps required?

thanks :wink:

2

answer? anyone?

3

There never was a plan to add SpeedTree to Unity. The plan was to implement terrain vegetation system similar to SpeedTree, and that was actually done. There is a terrain vegetation system in Unity.

4

Hello,

You can download Terrain Assets here :

http://unity3d.com/support/resources/assets/terrain-assets.html

Several trees and others inside.

Plus you can create tour trees udner bryce or vue and import them i think.

++
:wink: :wink:

5

i appreciate the answer, although i’m not sure you read my post correctly :wink:

i’m not asking about Unity’s plan, i’m asking whether or not Speedtree can somehow be used with Unity, definitively, and if so, how?

And lastly, if there was someone else that did it and would be willing to share a little of the implementation?

6

I would assume (hope) that it could be implemented by writing a C plugin to interface with Unity and Speedtree.

7

i found sth like this

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=21467&highlight=speedtree

8

wow, that was an old post when i was working on a project with Ping golf… we ended up using/licensing another engine to give us the ability to get our vegatation sorted out…

to be honest, instead of a homegrown solution, the ability to directly take advantage of the licenses we already had, was huge for us…

9

yeah but you couldn’t have taken benefit from it anywhere but windows - standalone with unity which is likely why it didn’t make sense to add it to unity (they have no osx version and the webplayer does not accept plugins at all)

10

true, but admittedly microsoft still has market share even with all of the macs, franken macs, lindos etc boxes out there…

also i wasn’t saying that it would be usable by everyone in every case, however those of us that are working on projects that are on windows with existing licenses for speedtree or whatever else would like to take advantage of them.

i wasn’t meaning that Unity even had to natively implement them either, just asking that since there was a plugin system, how it might be utilized to implement speedtree or if it was indeed possible…

11

webplayer is windows too, none the less you couldn’t use it there even if supported as it does not support plugins.

Anyway, Unity has no scheme for 3rd party AA+ plugin dropin support as $100’000++ engines might have.

though if you had that much cash floating around, you had the option to source license unity and integrate speedtree on the other hand :slight_smile:

12

so what is the visually best solution for trees and vegetation?
I was looking for it yesturday, it seemed that speedtreee had lots of trees, and if you are not using it, you are just stuck on 3d low poly trees?

13

The trees you can create with Unity3’s tree creator are excellent, and they provide lots of options.

14

where how do you get this unity3 beta and test it?

15

You buy Unity Pro. It’s surprising you ask the question given it’s been the single biggest topic since Unity3 was announced.

16

The absolute best solution would be to model them by hand. I’ve nothing against speedtree (I’m a big fan of it and think it’s great fun to play with), but always find myself going back to making things myself.

17

the original question was: if there was a way to integrate speedtree using the 3rd party plugin system, and if so how?

so far i’ve yet to hear an actual response with actual details explaining why or why not…

this was never meant to be a discussion about speedtree vs. whatever… the whole point of a plugin system is to be able to do exactly what i’m talking about, right?

@dreamora, i appreciate what you’re saying about the webplugin, but to be honest it bears absolutely nothing to what i’m talking about… consider this, COD5/Crysis/most games are NOT browser based for several very good reasons… while i might not be able to use it with the plugin system, it was never something i was going to do anyway…

actually, now that i think about it, why not? shouldn’t any piece of base architecture (plugins) be usable by it’s constituent components?

18

i am active since a few days ago, so…
thank you for the answer

19

No, because you can’t hook into the rendering setup, low rendering loop etc.

SpeedTree basically hooks in on the API level to which you can only get access if you source license unity. Not with free or pro.

Because in this case its no plugin.
SpeedTree is an engine aspect.
its either integrated in the base or its not and if the answer is “its not” it will not do anything.

Engines that allow it to be plugged in have it integrated but bind and load the functions dynamically if the dll is detected etc

20

cool, thanks… so that pretty much means that any existing third party libraries will probably not be able to take advantage of the plugin system such as Umbra, speedtree, Havok (among other physics packages), lighting etc that need to be able to hook into either pipeline or need callbacks etc (custom external shaders etc)…

to be honest i love Unity… i couldn’t wait for a port to windows so i could get rid of my frankenMac and one of the biggest draws for me was the plugin system by which (i thought) i could extend anything i needed by writing my own plugins where needed. Now it seems that is not the case and access to the pipeline is as restricted as most other engines… and in some cases probably more so, indy or not…

please don’t take my frustration as a poo-poo on the engine or it’s community because it’s not. i just have to re-manage my expectations…