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Welcome to the World of Treecraft
Science Daily reports that a Stanford computer scientist named Vladlen Koltun has produced a program that allows both amateur and professional creators of virtual worlds to select from countless possible types of trees (all modeled based on scientific research) and to customize those trees based on their own needs.
The program is cleverly called Dryad, and Koltun and his associates hope that it will be one of the first steps towards making the development of believable 3D online spaces an achievable goal for creative types without enormous budgets. Koltun said that there is a very small community of 3D modelers skilled in creating objects like trees, and that the rarity of the skill is partly responsible for a lull in the progression of user-generated virtual worlds.
So, if you are planning on making a 3D MMO, you can use the program for free at the Stanford website. Maybe then your army of expensive employees can be smaller! It's also just fun to play with.
