There is a Company Which Only Makes In-Game Trees

There’s a whole company devoted to helping game developers create convincing trees. SpeedTree offers developers an enormous library of trees as well as tools that let them instantly make their own, and its tech has appeared in everything from The Witcher 3 to Forza to Destiny and many other video games. Which video game trees are the best? Tell us in the comments.

I know we don’t spend a lot of time looking at the in-game trees but Sonia Piasecki, who’s been an artist at SpeedTree for five years, does.

“That’s a hard question,” she said. “A lot of recent games have some great trees. I was really impressed with The Witcher 3. That was a couple years ago, but it was some really beautiful tech. Right now, though, I would say Assassin’s Creed: Origins.”

Piasecki, who is given an unlimited amount of hours researching tree species and how they’re influenced by different seasons in the chase of authenticity, praised the game’s attention to detail. Trees within the same classes weren’t all alike, she explained. “They added some personality quirks to the trees, which was fun to see,” she said. “I like how they did the palm trees. It didn’t just look like a palm. They focused on different species.”

She also gave props to the setting, Egypt, which allowed for types of trees we don’t often see in other open-world games, focused as they are on verdant fantasy plains and bustling modern cities. “It’s amazing how places like that have so much plant life that you just don’t think about,” she said.

Assassin’s Creed: Origins has the best and believable video game trees. Well, aside from the Great Deku Tree from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. And The Witcher 3‘s special glitch commemoration tree.