Procedural content?

[Jerky]

I am lead artist in a Ogre-engined MMO currently in development. MMO's have a huge amount of content. This is my problem. In trying to think of the best solutions to this problem, it occurs to me that a fast way of creating a lot of content is to do it procedurally. It is a very hot topic in the game dev scene right now. It seems like more and more projects use procedurally generated content. Oblivion uses procedurally created forests, nature and terrain and Spore uses procedurally created animations. I am sure there are others.

My hope is to be able to to procedural characters (isnt this how you can do character creation?). I could be confusing things. Also, procedural trees would be very nice. Selecting textures and height, and then being able to select overall shape and then fine tuning down to branches and the way the leaves hang. I know this is possible, and not all that complicated. This would lessen the need for things like Speed tree. For characters, wouldnt the ability to morph/mold a mesh or texture based on parameters be procedural, or am I thinking of 2 seperate things?

Here is the question. Does Ogre support this? Or is it solely up to the programmers and have nothing to do with the engine? If so, does anyone have any experience, hints, or links that they want to share?

Thanks.

[xavier]

Ogre just renders your 3D world. It's up to you how to put stuff in it, so the answer is "solely up to the programmers and have nothing to do with the engine".

We are planning something similar with terrain (our project does not plan to have AI or NPCs).