Game Development Community

Planta SDK

by Wiley · in Artist Corner · 08/06/2006 (9:03 pm) · 2 replies

I came across this SDK used for creating trees. PLANTA

http://www.fluidinteractive.com/graphics/planta/

The videos look pretty impressive. I belive this is opengl based and I couldnt tell you what it would take to integrate or use with Torque. I requested the SDK but unfortunately they are on vacation until August 19.

The license is free for non-commercial. There is also commercial license.

#1
08/07/2006 (12:40 am)
I dont see where it says openGL only or why it would be such. You integrate it into your engine - where you can have whatever renderer you want.

Looks pretty nice though I hope it's crossplatform, which is a big deal.. at least for me.
#2
08/07/2006 (1:05 am)
Sorry didnt mean it was opengl only, but you are right.. if you integerate into your existing engine you can use what renderer you want..

Quite honestly, I dont know too much more than what is listed below and on the this link at gamedev.net

check out the gamedev link below.. some nice screenshots.

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=395037

Here's the skinny on Planta.. overall looks pretty promising:

"Planta is an advanced, free for non commercial use, 3D engine for realtime realistic plant rendering. Planta SDK is the perfect solution for rendering and animating complex scenes made of thousands, even milions, of trees and plants with highly realistic quality in real-time (the scene in the pictures you're seeing contains one milion trees). "

At the moment, the SDK comes with an OpenGL renderer, even if Planta can be easily integrated with other 3D engines. It's free for non commercial use and a linux version will be released soon. Features:
-Dynamic lighting and shadows on leaves and branches
-Automatic level of detail (LOD) generation to optimize rendering pipeline performance
-Complex animation system reproducing realistic motion of branches and leaves based on wind direction and strength
-Easy integration with existing engines
-Full source for an OpenGL renderer, based on the latest shader technologies
-Editor to create custom plant types or edit existing ones