Adding Trees

Trees in a Farming Simulator map are usually imported as i3D files into the GIANTS Editor. Anything that goes into a map for the game is mainly imported content, referred to as assets. Such content may be:

• Nature Assets (trees, rocks, cliffs, tree stumps, etc.)
• Building Assets (factory, house, skyscraper, wooden shed, garage, etc.)
• Interactive Assets (production points, farm buildings, fence openings, doors, etc.)

Importing Trees From Vanilla

To import trees into our map, we need to open the map inside GIANTS Editor. In some vanilla maps that we can make new mods from, the Scenegraph for some of these maps contains several transform groups for trees.

Adding A New Transform Group

If we just want our own tree-asset structure inside the Scenegraph, we may create a new transform group.

We can do so by clicking Create > Transform Group (above the main toolbar inside the editor). This will create a new group that says “transform”. Double-click that one and rename it to something suitable for the trees you want to import. It’s pretty much up to you what names you give these transform groups and how you want things organised. I will rename my transform group to trees.

What I also wanna do is to change the clip distance for this transform group to one kilometre. Since this is a 2 x 2 kilometre map, it’s not unusual to have a clip distance within the map’s size, especially for assets that are to be visible at a long distance. Clipping Distance is just visibility from the player’s position, 1st-person/3rd-person camera in all XYZ directions, since there is no clipping in GIANTS Engine or GIANTS Editor for clipping in X, Y, or Z only.

I’m talking about XYZ here because these are directions in 3D space, whereas clipping isn’t XYZ-dependent.

So, to change the clipping distance for the trees transform group, I’ll change Clip Distance inside the Attributes Panel to 1000 units.

Importing i3D Files

Now we are ready to import the i3d files for our trees. Let’s first start by clicking File > Import. This will open up the default file browser for your operating system (e.g., Windows 11).

Navigate to the root directory for Farming Simulator, browse to the data directory, then maps.

Inside maps, you’ll find another directory called trees.

Continue browsing for the folder labelled apple, then click the file labelled apple_stage03.i3d.

We have now successfully imported the i3D file into GIANTS Editor.

Placing The Apple Tree Inside The Transform Group

To do this, we must select the apple tree inside the Scenegraph. Usually, it’s already selected.
Active selected objects inside the scenegraph will be lit with a blue background behind the object name.

Next, we press Ctrl+C and Ctrl+X to copy and cut.

Then we click on the trees transform group, and press Ctrl+V to paste the object inside the transform group.

Placing The Apple Tree On Terrain

We select the apple tree again in the Scenegraph, press Ctrl+B, and move the mouse to place it at the active viewing location.

The clipping distance for this tree’s transform group is 250 units. We may change this to 1000 units or the clipping distance you prefer.

So this is how you import trees from the game’s root directory: import the i3d files for the trees and place them in a transform group. You may also create a new transform group and copy, cut and paste this one into your parent trees transform group for other tree types.