roadtovostok

Grass Performance Tests

Added 2025-03-24 19:45:46 +0000 UTC

Hi!

I'm still working on the updated nature assets and one thing that I especially want to improve is the grass system since it's a major factor related to performance and "filling" the empty map spots nicely.

Here's some behind-the-scenes grass testing with new grass and improved blending tricks.

Since this nature topic is quite important, I will spend few more extra days with this, so at the end of the month I have a really good foundation to start working on the commercial maps in Q2.

Here's a bit more detailed explanation of the grass improvements:

1. Grass is spawned in small batches to avoid clipping with objects and then automatically combined into 40x40m chunks.

2. Grass shader has two "dynamic clip" values which make sure the nearby grass has good shadows and distant grass doesn't pixelate.

3. Chunks are rendered to 80m (fading starts 10m earlier) and shadows are only casted to the nearby chunks related to player position.

4. Chunks have LOD0 and LOD1 which makes the nearby grass chunks more detailed and distant ones have 50% less geometry.

5. The spawner has a "swiss cheese" mask option which makes the spawn event more randomized, so there's holes / empty spots in the grass field.

6. Grass shader has a simple ground gradient support which makes sure the bottom part of the grass is colored close to the terrain surface / ground textures.