If you want to make trees in video games, you can grab a program called SpeedTree and get to growing, pruning and playing god. This is what game developers do, including apparently the makers of Batman: Arkham City, whose game had trees I forgot about.
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This is the kind of tech they're showing at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. SpeedTree isn't a new thing. It's a staple. But that doesn't make it any less exotic to those of us in the normal world who look at so much of video game creation as a kind of magic.
DISCUSSION
The problem with being a game developer is that you can't simply build a game from scratch by yourself at home with no money, because programs like Speedtree cost around $5000. And that's only one program. To create a decent game, you need around a dozen or so programs that cost around the same.
Indie game developers like myself get screwed over by overpriced programs and licenses. While the cheap and free software is always crap.