SpeedTree 8 painted foliage vs placing trees in UE4

[morningstar666]

I just got news on the new SpeedTree 8 for UE4 and I've read the documentation on exporting and I've seen the video as well, but despite this one thing remains unclear.

Two months ago I made a post trying to figure out why the speedtree LOD transitions weren't working correctly in unreal, and as it turns out it was because we were using them as painted foliage rather than individually placing them-- for some reason the information needed to do it correctly wasn't available,

So I wanted to know whether this issue had been addressed and resolved in the new speedtree version, (since in the Speedtree 8 for UE4: Exporting, video they do mention painted foliage as an option for tree placement), or if it is still better to manually place trees.

Thanks!

[Greg Croft]

Hello,

SpeedTree-style smooth LOD (where parts of the tree scale away) is still not available in painted foliage, as the information needed to do it is not available in the shader. However, if you choose painted foliage in the v8 importer for UE4, it will automatically set up regular crossfaded LOD for you instead, which does work in foliage.