In this blog we'll detail how our new Simplygon 10.3 release can be used to optimize Unity games.

Simplygon has a pipeline specific tailored for vegetation optimization; Billboard Cloud for Vegetation. One of its features is an automatic trunk detector which can separate out the trunk from all leaves and run it in a separate reduction processor. However for this blog post we are going to do that manually to increase our control over the processing.

The billboard cloud aims to replace the objects in a scene with a view independent set of billboards. The Billboard mode: Outer shell makes the planes fit to the outer shell of objects, as opposed to Billboard mode: Foliage.

The billboard cloud aims to replace the objects in a scene with a view independent set of billboards. For vegetation assets the "Billboard mode" should be set to "Foliage" . This mode allows the billboards to represent the foliage volume with intersecting planes. The leaves should map to the billboards in a manner that keeps the perception of volume and silhouette close to the original tree.