[color=#0066cc]"Woody3D was developed by Neil Kemp at Rendering Systems Inc. as an inexpensive solution for developers to bring fully animated trees and foliage to their applications and engines. Woody3D was discontinued in July 2012. [/color]
[color=#0066CC]Real-time tree generation and animation remain a core focus for Neil and Rendering Systems. In the future they'll place a higher emphasis on modeling tools and less on source code integration."[/color]
Woody3D was a long term comitment for me. Three years of development. I wanted to create affordable real-time trees for developers. Why did it fail? Simple, the technology was complex and not easily integrated into today's popular engines. It focused more on source code integration and had a very nerdy user inteface. It should have focused on a simple intuitive interface (draw the tree - grab and bend the branches, etc.) with easy export to popular file formats.
So that's what I plan to do. Start again. I believe I can take what learned from Woody3D (and ShaderMap 2) to build a better (single) tool to generate fully animated 3D trees and plants for video games, simulations, and software rendering systems. I can't fail if I don't quit.
The Woody3D Field of Trees video will remain online: