Plant life and other vegetation typically comprise an important visual element in realistic driver training simulations, particularly for off-road vehicles. With this in mind, Vortex Studio’s Vegetation Library allows you to add realistic trees, plants, and wind to your scene or mechanism. It’s as simple as selecting a plant and dragging it across the screen, directly into your simulation.
In Vortex Studio 2018b, we made numerous upgrades to the Vegetation Library:
- Many more vegetation types are now available – trees, bushes, grass… over 50 individual types!
- Anti-aliasing has been improved on leaves and branches, so they now look less “blocky” and more natural.
- Ambient occlusion effects have been improved as well, giving more volume and depth to the foliage, for more realistic scenes.
Last, but certainly not least, vegetation can now react to wind, through the addition of a Vegetation Wind extension to scenes. Wind animation can be costly performance-wise – that’s why we’ve made it possible to activate/deactivate the wind feature for each individual tree. Note that this parameter is different from the Wind parameter in the Skydome, although it is possible to link them with a script and connection for “one-stop-shop” wind control.
The Vegetation Library feature is based on licensed SpeedTree technology. SpeedTree is the de facto standard for vegetation in the game and movie industries, and provides beautiful models optimized for real-time use.
Enjoy –
