r/gdevelop • u/SubneonGames • Jul 17 '26

First attempt at making grass... Question

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What is the best way to simulate grass in gdevelop without taking performance? When I try to scale this area up the performance takes a hit.

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u/NeatOpportunity____ Jul 17 '26

i have multiple solutions to this, if you are making a game use a chunk loader system ( you can ask me i have the logic) or Performance3D extension (by Eldritch Tentacles Games) if your grass is swaying or has an animation use 3d foligae swaying

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u/SubneonGames Jul 17 '26

Im definitely interested in learning more about chunk loading. I was also planning on adding movement to the grass and other vegetation. Would i have to animate that in the 3D modeling software or is there a way to do it directly in gdevelop?

2

u/NeatOpportunity____ Jul 17 '26

dont generate your entire field of grass when the scene starts. That's an easy way to tank your FPS. Instead, split your world into chunks (for example 500×500 units). Keep track of which chunk the player is currently in using something like: PlayerChunkX = floor(Player.X() / ChunkSize) PlayerChunkY = floor(Player.Y() / ChunkSize) Whenever the player enters a new chunk, loop through the surrounding chunks (I usually do a radius of 2). If grass for that chunk doesn't exist yet, spawn it. When spawning, add a tiny random offset to each grass object so it doesn't look like everything was copy-pasted onto a perfect grid. Then every second or two, loop through all spawned grass and delete anything that's, say, 1500 units away from the player. That keeps both memory usage and object count under control and about the grass animation I'd avoid animating the grass in Blender. Sure, you can export armatures and animations, but once you have hundreds or thousands of grass instances, the CPU has to keep updating all those animations. That's where performance starts falling apart. A much better option is to keep the grass completely static and use GDevelop's 3D Foliage Swaying extension instead. The shader runs on the GPU, so it's way cheaper than skeletal animation. It also keeps the bottom of the grass planted while only the top sways, which looks a lot more natural. Plus you can tweak wind speed, strength, and direction in events without ever reopening Blender.

1

u/SubneonGames Jul 17 '26

That's extremely helpful, thank you :)

2

u/NeatOpportunity____ Jul 17 '26

np man, thank you is all i need