Polygon Wind Shader

In 2017 I was looking for a wind shader to use on a low poly tree model. I couldn't find one that provided the visual I was looking for, so I started to develop the Polygon Wind Shader.

It is designed to generate a more suttle and organic wind movement on trees. But it's not great for heavy wind effects. Lately I haven't had much time to work on it, so I decided to publish the source code here and make it available so that anyone can use and modify it.

Here are some videos of what I achieved using it:

Using on individual model

Polygon.Wind.-.Unity.wind.shader.for.low.poly.assets.mp4

Using on a Unity Terrain

Polygon.Wind.-.Used.with.Unity.Terrain.mp4

How to use it:

Just apply the shader to a material and apply the material to your asset. The ideal tree asset is one with a single mesh.

The shader has various parameters for you to tweak:

• Wind Wave Size;
• Tree Sway Displacement;
• Foliage Wiggle Amount;
• Branches Up/Down;
• Foliage Wiggle Speed;
• Tree Sway Stutter;
• Tree Sway Speed;
• Wind Direction;
• Red Vertex Influence;
• Blue Vertex Influence.

It uses a series of inputs to calculate the final vertex position, one of them being the vertices colors of the mesh:

• Red - Use on the branches to enable the up/down movement;
• Blue - Use it on the leaves to get that organic wiggle.

Known applications using the shader

Star Wars Galaxies' Mod.

This shader was used by Borrie BoBaka to make the mod Borrie's Swaying Trees

Master's Thesis on VR

I also discovered that PolygonWind was used by students Malte Lindholm Hølledig and Rikke Katrine Petersen on their master's thesis ZenVR: A biofeedback virtual reality experience for assisting meditation at Aalborg University.