As part of the induction week for my final year at uni, I’ve been discussing what I could cover as my dissertation project.
I’ve arrived at something suitable with this:
Trees have often been represented in games in a number of different ways, from 2D billboards that rotated to face the camera, to low-poly 3D models in more recent titles. Often, trees will be the same model or billboard posted over and over again, which doesn’t appear convincing!
This project will explore a number of topics related to procedurally generating and representing trees and forests in game titles, with the view to removing such phenomena and making forested environments more convincing. Factors that affect the physical appearance of trees, such as the size, shape, colour and texture of branches, leaves and bark will be considered. External factors such as seasons, environmental effects such as wind and rain, and interactions with other game objects will also be taken into account.
The end result of this project will be a tech demo demonstrating some of these effects, and a report detailing some of the problems the game developer faces when implementing trees in modern games, along with suggestions of how these could be changed and improved.
I’m just waiting on final approval of this from my appointed supervisor, but hopefully this is a go! =D