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Trick For Reducing Vertex Count For Custom Unity Grass Renderer

Find out how Pinwheel Studio rebuilt Polaris 3 for better performance.

Polaris

A new version of Polaris, the low-poly terrain tool, has been out for a while, bringing major improvements aimed at boosting both runtime and editor performance and streamlining workflows, among other changes.

In Polaris 3, the tree and grass rendering systems have been completely overhauled. Culling is now faster and more accurate, significantly reducing GPU load while efficiently utilizing available CPU resources. Improved LOD handling also allows for the creation of more complex outdoor scenes.

In a recent devlog, Pinwheel Studio shared an inside look at these updates. Notably, now both trees and grass support an extra LOD1 level, where simplified models and materials can be used. These reduce GPU rendering time by minimizing vertex count and disabling costly visual effects such as wind animation, translucency, and more.

At LOD0, grass is rendered using a regular quad mesh. At LOD1, grass uses a flipped triangle with the tip sunk deep below the ground. It's just 3 vertices, looks weird up close, but from a distance, it does the job.

Apparently, this one vertex provides massive savings when you're dealing with hundreds of thousands or even millions of instances.

You can learn more and see the benchmarking results for Polaris 3 here. Purchase it by clicking this link and join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on InstagramTwitterLinkedInTelegramTikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.

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Comments 3

  • Anonymous user

    Are there any benchmarks that prove the single triangle approach would be faster than a quad, considering overdraw?The area of a single triangle is larger than a quad's. A balance is needed between the vertex count and the render area.

    1

    Anonymous user

    ·20 days ago·
  • Anonymous user

    Regardless of performance gain , design wise there is a merit here .. ie free roots , often times placing the quad on steep terrains result in floating cards , this will atleast help root that grass to terrain with its additional extending triangle point

    0

    Anonymous user

    ·9 days ago·
  • Anonymous user

    on modern hardware from the past 5-10 years, polycount is basically not a problem.  I think nearly all, if not all, of the performance gain is from removing wind animation and simplifying materials at distance.  a large chunk of that triangle is never going to be seen and will incur render cost regardless, not much if batched and sorted properly, but still more than enough to undo the absolutely minute gain from one less vertex.

    0

    Anonymous user

    ·18 days ago·

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