A WIP custom ponderosa pine authored in SpeedTree for use in my broader UE5 world, currently focused on the high desert and mixed alpine ecology of Central Oregon. The base shape and silhouette are locked in for this mid-size variant, with larger, more mature trees and additional age and growth variation coming in later passes.

-Bark Material-
The bark is an original tiling material built from a real ponderosa pine scanned in the field using Polycam on iOS. The scanned trunk was brought into 3ds Max, where I used a bake process to flatten the scan geometry into a tiling bark material with the full PBR set. The result captures the distinctive plate-and-fissure structure of mature ponderosa bark, including the warm reddish tones the species is known for.

-Needles-
WIP needle cards are in progress, built to read correctly at multiple distances without falling apart on the silhouette. Final tuning on density and clustering will happen alongside the variant pass. All hand modeled in 3DS Max. I initially set out to scan a set of needles, but due to the size of that it was determined to not be feasible with the approach of using needle cards instead of larger clusters of needles.

-LODs and Performance-
A working LOD chain is in place and rendering correctly in Unreal, with a basic performance test running a small grove against a mannequin for scale. Fine-tuning on LOD transition distances and polycount balance is still being worked out. I'm considering a shift towards using Nanite foliage for this, so I can potentially use my leaf cards as true geo instead of the resulting baked texture. Doing so would at time of posting require a hacky workaround to get it working with that system since Nanite foliage currently only seems to support the new wave of Quixel Megaplants.

-Next Passes-
Additional tree variants, needle card polish, LOD balancing, and integration into the broader foliage population pipeline for the world.