SpeedTree is a popular middleware package for creating trees and foliage for games and other media. Used for games like the Forza series, Gears of War, Far Cry, Dragon Age and many more titles, as well as films such as Iron Man 3, Avatar and World War Z. Amazon have now 
announced SpeedTree 8 is integrated into their Lumberyard engine and better yet, available free.
Following the release of Starter Game, we’re thrilled to give you another tool for building imaginative worlds in Lumberyard. Introducing SpeedTree 8 for Lumberyard, available free to all Lumberyard developers starting today. You can download it here.
The combination is a powerful one: take the industry-standard in 3D vegetation modeling, seamlessly integrate it with Lumberyard’s advanced rendering and lighting technology, and remove any subscription cost. The result is a faster, more intuitive way to create visually stunning worlds for your games. We can’t wait to see what you’ll build.
SpeedTree 8 brings the following new features:
- Full PBR material workflow and rendering – PBR rendering and a revamped material workflow give you more precise control over your maps. You can also adjust your models before exporting them into Lumberyard, saving you time and effort.
- New Generators – Sometimes imperfections can make your trees appear more lifelike. With these new generators, you can create a variety of realistic features on your trees, including knots, fungi, gashes, and cavities.
- New Shape Control – This feature allows you to easily bunch branches together, so you can achieve more natural, organic shapes in vegetation (such as the “broccoli” effect.) You can create large clumpy trees or small clusters within your tree branches.
- New SpeedTree Library – Buy stock assets, including 2K leaf textures and 8K bark textures. Get access to thousands of species of trees from around the world—an incredibly diverse, high-quality collection of models and materials.
- And much more – Including unlimited age variation; one-draw-call models with tiling textures, wind, and LOD; new techniques for low-poly branch structure modeling and mesh editing; and automatic vertex color painting for wind, with an in-modeler preview.
You can read more about the SpeedTree and Lumberyard announcement here.