Reflecting on the state of foliage modelling after 3 years of R&D in Houdini. I will share my journey, workflow and hopefully some insights into the world of videogame plants, botanical research, simulation and UX design. I will also dive deep into the production pipeline that we have built at Applied Intuition, revealing the tips, tricks and nodes that went into building our "speedy" in-house tree creation tools.
George Hulm began his career 15 years ago as an amateur level designer in the Unreal Tournament mod community. He got his first commercial break creating levels for the indie hit Overgrowth, and since then, has worked on projects of all shapes and sizes, picking up a variety of tools and skills along the way. Recently, in the role of lead technical artist, George helped HistoricVR ship their debut Steam title, GuildfordCastleVR. These days, he tackles creative and technical challenges alongside the talented team at Applied Intuition. George teaches technical art to masters students at Gloucester University and occasionally shares tutorials via his KZfaq channel - Undini.