Tree Billboards

[Gandi]

I thought about creating some kind of tree-creator, which takes a model (created with the gmf-sdk) and the places the bones in the right position (forming the tree)

 

now my question: how would i do the LOD best? i guess billboards wont work like that (the model are just vertices and bones placed at 0/0/0 as i place them at runtime)

i guess making the LOD will be best if i create, for instance, 3 versions of each tree (each with less vertices then the one before) and then creating one billboard for each tree-type hoping this will not cause a too big graphical artifact..

 

so to repeat:

i got the modeler where i can define several parameters of the tree and which creates the .gmf file just containing rings of vertices with a bone (or 3 gmf files each with less vertices?)

at runtime i place the bones according to the parameters i set at the modeller (for all 3 models?)

then i create 1 tree for each type which i use for creating the billboard..

 

does anyone have a better idea??

[Pancakes]

If you're making it for yourself I think that's great. However I'm not sure if it's time well spent if you are making it with others in mind because usually people will either buy their trees from somewhere else or they have some other method of modeling trees.

[Gandi]

I'm making it for one of my projects.. dont like it if all the trees look the same direction..