Games are looking more and more beautiful every year, and it’s always nice to cease blowing things up for a second to really admire the worlds that has been so lovingly crafted around us. Now, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is stopping to admire videogame foliage too, and is awarding vegetation rendering software program SpeedTree with a Technical Achievement Award.
SpeedTree has been used to generate trees in games as diverse as Fallout 3, Tiger Woods PGA Tour ’08 and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor since 2002, as well as blockbuster movies such as The Avengers and Maleficent. From the Academy:
To Michael Sechrest for the modeling design and implementation, Chris King for the real-time interactive engineering, and Greg Croft for the user interface design and implementation of SpeedTree Cinema.
This software substantially improves an artist’s ability to create specifically designed trees and vegetation by combining a procedural building process with the flexibility of intuitive, direct manipulation of every detail.
Sechrest, King and Croft will receive their award at the Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation on February 7, before the standard Academy Awards on February 22.
SUPERMAN WINS THUMBS DOWN
Well obviously.