Due to the shear number of polygons often required to make believable 3D trees, creating realistic ones for use “in-game” can be a challenging, time consuming task. SpeedTree from IDV aims to change all that with it’s intuitive UI, ease of use and powerful toolset. Making believable trees and plants has literally never been easier!

In this new two part tutorial, artist Madhan Mohan will get you up to speed on working with the software, and show you how to not only create an great looking optimized Pine tree using SpeedTree, but how to get the model up and running inside of UDK as well. In part two Madhan will walk you through the process of exporting the completed model from SpeedTree and compiling it for use in UDK. Material setup, populating terrain and generating collision primitives are also covered in detail. Complete the project after the jump!

SpeedTree was the driving force behind the realistic foliage in many AAA games including Batman: Arkham Asylum, Gears Of War 3 and Dragon Age: Origins to name a few, not to mention the gorgeous jungles of Pandora ILM created for the film “Avatar”.

Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.

Related Tutorials:

• A Comprehensive Beginners Guide to UDK
• Quick Tip: Optimizing Textures In Unreal Development Kit
• UDK – Creating Events With Unreal Kismet
• Quick Tip: An Introduction to Light-Mapping in UDK