Branches is a plugin for 3D Studio Max. Included in the plugin is a collection of tools for modeling 3D trees intended for games. This solution relies heavily on instancing and imposters to create complex hierarchies of data that are memory efficient. As an example, the tree on the left has only 10 unique branches. Sample code is provided to show how branches can be exported and viewed in game. Note, this is not a tool for generating procedural trees, but a modeling tool for creating trees by hand.

Unlicensed you will not be able to save branches to a max file. However you are still able to collapse the branches to editable mesh or editable patches in order to save your work. These tools are provided without any warranty and you will use them at your own risk.

v3.00 history

The FBX SDK is available from www.autodesk.com/fbx