Technical Art Director Nate LaMartina wanted to find a way to break the uniform motion of grass in games, aiming for a more organic look without the complexity that usually comes with standard setups.
His solution is a shader-driven system that combines PCG, per-instance data, Blueprints, and a moving wind cell, bypassing traditional wind nodes or vertex painting. According to the developer, this system handles 460,000 instances and over 9 million Nanite blades.
Nate plans to release a technical breakdown, showing this approach and tips for making it more performant.
Follow him on LinkedIn for updates, and if you're interested in Unreal Engine 5 grass, also check out Michael Simard's optimization experiment and the gorgeous grass asset by Cloviren:
