This is an intermediate release of the SpeedTree 8 SDK. The previous release was the 8.4.0 Preview release which was incomplete and for Windows/DirectX 11 only. This release represents a significant internal restructuring of the SDK to accommodate a very different rendering approach required by adding DirectX 12 support. It is a much more complete release than the preview and can be used for production.

A list of high-level changes to the SDK since the 8.4.0 Preview release:

• The STSDK file format has changed. Tree models must be recompiled to work with this release. Old STSDK files will not load. Developers must use the SpeedTree Games Modeler 8.4.3 Dev release (or later) to compile STSDK files for use with this SDK.
• DirectX 12 support added.
• A great deal of internal general SDK restructuring was necessary to add DirectX 12. It’s too much to detail here, but with full source in the 8.4.1 Beta release, all of it will be available to inspect.
• Alternate coordinate systems (left-handed Y-up instead of default right-handed Z-up) fully supported.
• Loading STSDK files from memory blocks instead of having the SDK access STSDK files directly now works.
• A bug in the grass system that caused the reference application to use hundreds of megabytes unnecessarily has been fixed.
• Constant buffers and shaders reorganized. Shaders will need to be recompiled.
• Several post effects (for example, bloom) were removed to streamline and simplify the code base.
• The DirectX 11 renderer was reorganized, streamlined, and updated to accommodate SDK structural changes for DirectX 12 support.
• Deferred rendering is much more robust in terms of matching the forward rendering path.
• Billboard matching the lowest 3D LOD has improved.
• All GUI code in the reference application was moved from the CMyApplication class into the separate CMyGui class.
• All the high-level rendering functions in MyRenderFunctions.cpp were completely reorganized and simplified.