I'm trying to use cubes to simulate grass

Hello all!

I'm in the process of making a game where everything in the game world is made out of primitive 3D shapes. It actually makes sense for the story, but I won't get into that.

Basically I'm trying to make a more 3D grass that looks like i'ts composed out of cubes. Here is a video I recorded of some cubes I animated under empty game objects and copy + pasted around a small scene that sort of gives off the look and feel I want:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qrhkq666s5m6l9y/Cube Grass Test - No audio.mp4?dl=0

The problem is doing it this way will create a massive amount of draw calls in a game world that is already going to have a ton of draw calls to begin with. I'm wondering there is a way to get this same effect via script and some how optimize it to work better than just copy and pasting cubes with an animation.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this! Thanks!

 

To reduce draw calls, you could do this by creating your own custom mesh and editing the vertices at runtime. The mesh could be constructed so that it appears to be made from cubes, but you would only have a single draw call. There is a script in Unity's Standard Assets called CombineChildren which I believe will do this, or you could refer to this post for a little further thought on the topic.

See also the section entitled Mesh Helpers on the Unify Community page for help creating custom meshes.

 

Voxels. Google it.

It doesn't in Mine Craft, and people still love that.

 

Thanks magnetix, I was hoping there would be some way to combine the children. I had no clue there was a script that did that in the new standard assets.

BoredMormon, Yeah, I debated using voxels for quite some time, but in the end it doesn't give the graphical effect I'm aiming for. I do love Voxel artwork though!