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: https://youtu.be/nG-dmBiyHXc
- Using on a Unity Terrain: https://youtu.be/CGLFoZXgCKA
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.