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