SpeedTreeCAD is the design force behind the SpeedTree product line. This powerful Windows® application provides all of the tools necessary to create, modify, and preview SpeedTree models in a highly interactive, three dimensional CAD environment. Used in conjunction with other members of the SpeedTree family (as shown in the linked image to the right), SpeedTreeCAD allows users to control all facets of tree rendering from lighting to wind effects to dynamic levels of detail. The procedural modeling system in SpeedTreeCAD offers designers the ability to specify details such as branch length, branching angles, gravitational influence, and flexibility in a quick and intuitive manner. Artist controlled bark, leaf, and frond maps in seven texture layers (diffuse, normal, detail, etc.) are mapped to tree geometry and previewed in real-time. All changes made during the design process are displayed instantly, thereby providing immediate feedback to the artist and significantly reducing modeling time. An endless variety of each tree can be created simply by varying its seed value or by letting SpeedTreeCAD choose a random seed for you. SpeedTreeCAD is used to create both highly detailed models for use in off-line renderings and highly optimized models for use in real-time applications. Whatever your application may be, SpeedTreeCAD has the tools to deliver.
	New Features   pause 4.1 Non-Square billboard generation • branch and frond fading • full DDS texture output • revert • 360° billboard fade tuning • billboard lighting comparison • various bug fixes 4.0 continuous compute • multiple texture layers • improved shaders and lighting • random instance rotations • improved curve editor • leaf mesh option • roughness • gnarl • cluster tool • light seam reduction • leaf normal smoothing • new polygon reduction techniques • complex root structures • normal-mapped billboards • branch pruning • improved GUI • animated LOD preview • SpeedWind 2.0 • multi-level wind • full pathname support • streamlined multi-doc support • reduced memory footprint • branch flooring • advanced texture coordinate controls • improved tree library with over 200 species

For all applications, SpeedTreeCAD provides the following functionality:

• Procedural Geometric Modeling — Control the shape, branching frequency, leaf placement, roughness, polygonal resolution, and many, many more aspects of a tree model via a series of interactive GUI components
  
  
• Texture Mapping — Apply and individually control the mapping of any of seven texture layers including diffuse, normal, detail, height, specular, and two user-defined layers.

SpeedTreeCAD goes even further for developers of real-time applications:

•  Level of Detail (LOD) — Users model trees at the highest LOD while SpeedTreeCAD generates lower LOD states all the way down to a billboard

   

• 360° Billboards — Rather than a single image at the lowest LOD, SpeedTreeCAD provides images sequences taken from around the tree to improve LOD transitions
  
  
• Normal Mapped Billboards — SpeedTreeCAD automatically generates normal maps for each billboard image to assist in dynamic lighting and instance rotation
  
  
• Composite Map Generation — Combine the maps of several trees into larger maps to reduce the number of texture context switches at run-time

 

• Self-Shadows — SpeedTreeCAD generates and maps the shadow of the leaves onto the branches for a highly effective and efficient shadowing technique
  
  
• Wind — Tune and export SpeedWind (SpeedTree's run-time wind simulator) settings in the editing environment
  
  
• Clusters — Turn a single tree into a group of trees (without increasing the number of draw calls required to render) at the touch of a button