JOHAN HAMMES
earthworks - vegetation
This advanced vegetation system is currently in active development. Stay up to date with its progress and latest features by following along on my YouTube channel.
Collaboration and licensing opportunities will be explored in the second half of 2025.
If you're interested, stay tuned for updates or reach out to express early interest.
Key Features:
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Fully automated Level of Detail (LOD) generation, enabling artists to create 6 to 7 LODs for grasses and up to 20 LODs for larger trees effortlessly.
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Automated randomization and age variation: for example, a single click can generate 4 randomized plants across 5 age stages, each with 7 LODs—resulting in 140 unique meshes.
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Comprehensive hardware optimization tailored to modern GPU architectures for maximum rendering performance.
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Reduced GPU memory usage, the tools free up valuable resources—giving you more headroom to add additional visual effects and enhancements to a game.
Motivation
Over the past eight years, I’ve worked on two separate projects that involved integrating SpeedTree into custom game engines. Both attempts ultimately fell short—not because of technical limitations, but due to a fundamental issue: successful vegetation rendering in games demands genuine collaboration between artists and programmers.
When projects are driven solely by one side—whether it's artists (as was the case with Fast & Furious) or programmers (as with EVO)—the result is often an imbalanced pipeline that struggles to scale or perform. This insight became the foundation for a new approach.
Earthworks Vegetation is a complete rethinking of how vegetation rendering should work, purpose-built for today’s GPU hardware—from the GTX 1060 to the RTX 5090 generation.
This technology is designed to empower artists and engineers alike, bridging the gap between creative freedom and technical efficiency.