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Grass Optimized

Showcase — Texture vs Mesh (Render Scale 1)

Showcase — Texture vs Mesh (Render Scale 2)

ZLZ Grass Mesh Baker

A grass card + a texture with alpha: most of the card’s area is transparent pixels, yet the GPU still has to process every one of them (fetch texture → test alpha clip → discard the pixel). That is what causes Overdraw — and ZLZ Grass Mesh Baker fixes it.

What you get

  • No Texture fetch
  • No Alpha Clip
  • No Overdraw from transparent pixels
  • Height Gradient + Wind still work exactly the same (the UVs are preserved)
  • No mesh modelling needed — just have the grass shape you want, press Bake, and the mesh is ready to use

How to open

Window > ZLZ > Grass Mesh Baker

How it works — 3 steps

  • Trace — reads the texture’s alpha channel and traces the outline of each blade, reducing the point count to the vertex budget you set
  • Layout — reads a reference mesh (the card-group mesh the grass uses now) card by card, and replaces every card with the traced shape at the exact same position / rotation / scale (it copies the existing layout, it never invents a new one)
  • UV — keeps texture-space UVs (x across, y base 0 → tip 1), so Height Gradient and Wind keep working exactly as before

Settings

  • Grass Texture — the source texture to take the shape from (only the alpha channel is read)
  • Layout Mesh — the existing card-group mesh the grass uses (e.g. SM_Grass_Group1); every card in it is replaced by the traced shape
  • Alpha Cutoff (0.05–0.95) — the alpha level counted as solid grass. Match it to the material’s Alpha Cutoff so the mesh edge lands where the clipped edge used to be
  • Simplify (0.5–8 pixels) — the outline tolerance. Higher = fewer points / coarser edge / lighter, lower = a tighter edge / more points
  • Bend Segments (1–12) — the horizontal vertex rows from base to tip. The wind bends the mesh per vertex, so more rows = a smoother lean, fewer rows = lighter but stiffer
  • The Preview shows the traced outline (gold) and the Bend Segments guide lines, plus the Cards / Verts / Tris stats before you press Bake Mesh

After baking: the mesh can be used directly with a material that has its Texture feature turned off. See the Demo for an example.

ZLZ Env Grass Resolution

Grass_Resolution

Renders the grass color into a downsampled buffer and composites it back — paying the remaining overdraw at only a fraction of the pixels.

Setup ZLZ Env Grass Resolution

  • Add Renderer Feature > ZLZ Env Grass Resolution to the main URP renderer used to render the image
  • Depth Texture must be enabled on the URP Asset

Resolution

  • Full — renders at native resolution (the feature idles, grass draws its own color) → highest quality / sharpest edges, but no saving
  • Half — half per axis (= 1/4 of the pixels) → much faster, edges soften slightly; the best value for most cases
  • Quarter — a quarter per axis (= 1/16 of the pixels) → fastest, softest edges; good for mobile or very dense grass fields