How to make swaying trees with DrawMeshInstanced?

I'm need to make a forest scene (on Oculus Go). DrawMeshInstanced looks like a promising way to draw a lot of trees, grass, and bushes in just a few draw calls.

But real plants sway in the breeze; they are not solid and static like statues.

How would I go about making my meshes sway while using DrawMeshInstanced? Is this a job for vertex displacement? Perhaps I could use vertex color or a second UV set to control how much each vertex sways (for solid trunk but swaying branches, etc.), and use some sort of noise function combined with time to make the ripples propagate across the scene?

Please let me know if I'm on the right track. And if there is an off-the-shelf shader already available that does this, please point it out (I'm not proud!).

Thanks,
- Joe

 

Hi. You are on the right track.

Have a look here for some more info on how phase and bend info could be added to the mesh.

https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch16.html

Lennart