Creating Vegetation for Games by Daniel Peres

In this tutorial I will take you in-depth into the whole process of creating vegetation for games, where we will learn how to tackle a tree asset from start to finish.

We will learn the fundamentals and mindset behind creating vegetation assets for games and how to leverage existing industry tools to speed up your workflows, making them faster, optimized and highly “iteratable”.

Not only will we learn the artistic values and fundamentals behind it, but also how to tackle it on a technical level by taking the most out of the tools, create LODs and billboards and setup the final asset in the engine.

Structure

• Intro & Considerations
• Research & Planning
• Blockout
• Highpoly
• Texturing
• Lowpoly
• Setup & Rendering
• ST9 Considerations

Software Used:

• Photoshop
• Blender
• SpeedTree
• Substance Designer
• Unreal Engine 4

Content
Roughly 4 hours of a narrated in-depth tutorial where we dive into the creation process behind a game-ready tree asset step-by-step.

In this tutorial we will start the journey by talking a little bit about the process of creating vegetation as a whole, how you can approach it and what are the pros and cons of integrating procedural tools like SpeedTree into the pipeline.

Then we will learn how to gather and analyze references in preparation for the challenge ahead, making sure everything is ready for us to achieve the best results possible.

After that we will be working towards our tree asset by starting with the blockout stage, understanding its importance and what to look for at that stage. Then we will move into the creation of our final highpoly meshes and textures, leveraging SpeedTree and Substance Designer.

By the end we will create our final lowpoly mesh, create the LODs, setup the wind and billboards and then set it all up inside UE4 so that everything is ready to be used across all of your projects.

About the instructor
My name is Daniel Peres and I am an Environment Artist mostly focused in creating vegetation and organic environments for games. Along my career I have worked in a few different studios like Bigmoon Entertainment (now Saber Interactive), Bohemia Interactive Simulations and Cloud Imperium games, as well as a freelancer.

This past experience allowed me to contribute to titles such as Dakar 18, Gunner Heat PC, VBS4/Blue IG and most recently Star Citizen, where I was able to tailor my skills into the development of organic worlds and vegetation.

Now I want to share this knowledge with you and help you not only learn about vegetation for games as a whole, but also learn some of the tips and tricks behind my process for creating them.