Vine & Creeper System – Procedural Growth, Runtime API & Physics

Grow Vines on Any Surface — In the Editor or at Runtime

Vine & Creeper System is a production-ready procedural vegetation tool. Place a seed on any surface, click Start Growth, and watch organic vines crawl across walls, arches, floors, ceilings, and overhangs — all in real time.

Need runtime interactivity? Spawn, trim, and regrow vines from code in a single line. Need performance? GPU compute acceleration, 4-level automatic LOD, and spatial culling keep frame times low even with dozens of vines in a scene.

Key Features

Procedural Growth

• Two growth algorithms: Surface Crawler (sine-wave wiggle, raycasting adhesion, corner wrapping) and Radial Spread (multi-branch fan ideal for ground cover)
• Configurable step size, branch probability, gravity, stiffness, and organic randomness
• Reproducible results via seed — same seed always produces the same vine

Runtime Dynamics

• Spawn vines at runtime with a single API call: VineSystem.Instance.CreateAndGrow(...)
• Trim vines to length and regrow them from any state — ideal for gameplay mechanics like cutting vines or environmental storytelling
• Full state machine: Growing → Paused → Trimmed → Regrowing
• async/await support with cancellation token for non-blocking workflows

Droop Physics

• Three modes: Verlet (rope simulation), Catenary (analytic curve), Hybrid (blend of both)
• Configurable stiffness and iteration count
• Applied after growth completes for realistic sag and weight

GPU-Accelerated Rendering

• Dual render path: GPU compute shader on PC/Console, CPU fallback for Mobile/WebGL
• Auto-detected at runtime — no manual configuration required
• Billboard LOD2 for distant vines

LOD & Culling System

• 4-level LOD: Full mesh → Reduced mesh (~50% segments) → Billboard → Culled
• Distance-based and screen-size-based switching
• Grid-based spatial culling for large open-world scenes

Editor Tools

• Visual seed placement in Scene view
• Optimize button to reduce segments while preserving shape
• Unified Preset Manager tab: browse, filter, set default, save, and create presets
• One-click bake to prefab with collider, lightmap UV, and mesh optimization options
• Save/load vine state to JSON for procedural world persistence

Preset Library (10 included)

• Dense Forest Vines, Wall Climbing Ivy, Tropical Jungle Vines
• Ground Covering Creepers, Fast Growing Creepers, Sparse Decorative Vines
• Minimalist No Leaves, Low Poly, Atlased Leaves Example, Throne
• Each preset is a standalone .asset file — duplicate and customise

Performance Benchmarks

• PC (mid-range): 5,000 segments @ ~4.15 ms/frame (240 FPS)
• Mobile: 1,000 segments @ ~2.34 ms/frame (428 FPS)
• 97%+ GC allocation reduction via dirty-flag mesh system and object pooling
• CPU manager overhead: ≤ 1.5 ms/frame

What's Included

• 87 C# scripts across API, Algorithms, Core, Editor, Rendering, and Runtime modules
• 4 Built-in pipeline shaders (Trunk, Leaves, Leaves Full, Leaves Simple)
• 10 VinePreset .asset files
• 4 demo scenes (Procedural Baked, Procedural Runtime, No Animated, Runtime Test)
• Full documentation: User Manual, API Reference, Presets Guide

Documentation

All documentation is included in the package under Docs/:

• USER_MANUAL — Installation, editor workflow, all 40+ parameters explained
• API_REFERENCE — Full API reference with signatures and code examples
• PRESETS_GUIDE — Every preset described with use-case guidance