I don't see what Star Trek Nemesis really has to do with rendering vegetation model variations. Aside from the fact that the TGD rendering engine's use in Nemesis was limited to planetary shots (where no vegetation is visible), there really was little to no planetary vegetation shown in the film that was not clearly filmed rather than CG.
TG2 and the underlying TGD rendering engine have been used in a number of professional productions, from films to TV ads to games and print publications. TG2's rendering engine is definitely "production capable". But again this says nothing in particular about the problem of varying vegetation models. It simply means the rendered output and application functionality combine to make an effective tool for some production needs. What specific needs TG2 meets, or what features it has, have little bearing on its overall "production capability".
In any case TG2 would be perfectly capable of *rendering* the variations if provided with them - e.g. multiple models and texture sets. It simply does not have a functional built-in system of creating such variations itself, automatically. It's possible that such a feature to vary textures might be included - and this could be done internally - or one that could load multiple model variations (for example with sequential file names), but it would be virtually impossible to actually vary the geometry *within* TG2 and get good results. You would need procedural plants for that, which TG2 doesn't currently support natively.
Anyway I was really just saying it would be difficult and time consuming but certainly far from impossible to get that level of realism out of TG2. I would say professional effects animators are definitely up to that task. A skilled hobbyist would be too, it's just a matter of investing the time and effort.
- Oshyan
